Housing on Aurora Works
In 2015 an irregular shaped, 0.38 acre site on Aurora sold for $1.5 million dollars. That site turned into a 4 story, 70 unit housing project known as Crew Apartments. They recently sold this project for $22.2 million dollars, proving that housing on Aurora is worthwhile business.
This project is one block south of the Aurora Licton Springs Urban Village (ALUV) which just saw it’s own corridor of Aurora up-zoned to 6 and 7 story residential buildings. It uses the same mass transit as ALUV (the E Line), and uses the same assets that ALUV provides along Aurora. It doesn’t even have storefronts! (more on that later)
When people first heard of Aurora’s rezone to something other than auto shops, junk yards, storage units, and grass growing vacant lots, many people said you simply can’t build housing on Aurora. It’s too noisy. It’s undesirable. It’s unsafe. These things all still may be true (and we can fix that), but this sale proves you can build real estate value (with housing!) on this stretch.
The Crew Apartments sit on a small, irregular site. The triangle shape is not easy to deal with when it comes to planning efficient housing units. Nearly all of ALUV has larger, double block, rectangular shaped lots & blocks. These are much easier to build upon, and the zoning now allows between 55' and 75' of building height. In addition, the ground level retail requirements can also provide additional cash flow for a developer. With hundreds of housing units under the same roof, small shops, restaurants, bookstores, cafes, etc all will thrive. There is also a ton of density inside the residential blocks of the urban village. So many people that the E line ranks #1 in bus ridership in all of Seattle. That’s 18,000 daily riders boarding on Aurora. Boarding next to the cafe, bookstore, corner store, etc.
This sale is massive for this urban village and for this city. With housing coming to Aurora, and wealth accumulating, the city will not only be able to collect Mandatory Housing Affordability construction fees, they’ll also collect larger property taxes on thriving business. Maybe the next focus should turn Aurora into a much more livable, safe street.
Light rail would do wonders!
ALUV has 57 acres that have been up-zoned to handle 8,000 new housing units. At the same scale as Crew Apartments, this means Aurora has a $2.5 billion dollar value waiting to be tapped.
