Celebrating the Start of New Affordable Housing Projects Around the Puget Sound

Principal Geologist Dave Cook recently attended multifamily real estate development firm GardnerGlobal’s (GC) kickoff celebration for the next stages of the Skyway Towncenter, a new affordable housing project in Skyway—one of King County’s most diverse and most underserved neighborhoods.

Dave raises a glass with attendees at GardnerGlobal’s celebration.

The Skyway Towncenter, which is still in the planning phase, will include both market-rate and affordable housing, some of which will have rent-to-own options. This option creates an opportunity for residents to have not just more housing stability, but to be able to build wealth and truly invest in their community.

Unlocking Needed Housing Projects in Skyway, Seattle’s Central District, and SeaTac

Aspect is working with CEO and Owner of GG Jaebadiah Gardner and consulting partner Loundyne Hare of Hare International, along with environmental attorney Mike Dunning of Perkins Coie to help GG through due diligence, cleanup planning, and procurement of over $1M in cleanup grants from the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Affordable Housing program. The grant will help fund environmental investigation and a portion of the cleanup of solvents spilled from a dry cleaner that once operated at the site. Senior Geologist Ali Cochrane is leading our environmental team as they investigate contamination. Once building design and construction planning starts, Aspect will lead the cleanup design and geotechnical engineering services.

Public outreach has begun related to early phases of transitioning this contaminated property to new use. On October 20, Ali and Dave spoke alongside Jaebadiah Gardner and Loundyne Hare at the Holy Temple Evangelistic Center in Skyway on environmental conditions and the investigations at the Towncenter site. These meetings and engagement with Ecology will continue so that Skyway residents can learn how the cleanup will result in a new residential community.

Attendees review plans to address contamination at the Skyway Towncenter site during a public outreach meeting on October 28th.

Aspect is also working with GC on the Sarah Queen Development, planned as a seven-story mixed-use building near the corner of 23rd Avenue and Union Street in Seattle’s Central District, where half of the units will be for affordable housing. Our geotechnical engineering team, led by Senior Geotechnical Engineer Eric Schellenger, recently started work on design and construction recommendations for the building foundations.

Also at GC’s kickoff celebration were Hamdi Abdulle and Bilan Aden. This mother and daughter team are the Executive Director and Associate Director, respectively, of African Community Housing & Development, (ACHD) a nonprofit that creates housing stability and economic development opportunities for African Diaspora immigrant and refugee communities in King County. Aspect will conduct environmental and geotechnical due diligence for a site ACHD is looking to acquire for a future residential community in SeaTac.

From left to right, Loundyne Hare, Hamdi Abdulle, Jaebadiah Gardner, and Bilan Aden.

Over 500 Affordable Housing Units Nearing Completion

These projects are starting as Aspect is nearing the end of two major affordable housing projects in south Seattle for Mt. Baker Housing Association (MBHA). Geotechnical special inspections are finished for construction of The Maddux, a two-building development that will add 203 units of affordable housing two blocks from the Mt. Baker Light Rail Station. Our work has included extensive cleanup of contaminants left from a dry cleaners and auto repair shop that once operated on the site and an innovative ground improvement technique to address liquefiable soils that could threaten building stability during an earthquake.

Left: Ground improvements consisting of displacement rigid improvements start at Maddux in Jan. 2021. Right: Maddux nears end of construction in October 2022.

Installation of aggregate piers and auger cast piles has started at Grand Street Commons, just south of the future Judkins Park light rail station near I-90. Construction is underway on three mixed-use buildings with a mix of affordable and market-rate housing and retail. The project is creating 776 new apartments, 360 of which will be affordable units.

A drill rig arrives via crane at Grand Street Commons, October 2022

For more on Aspect’s support for Affordable Housing, visit our Affordable Housing website.

Aspect Leads Environmental Oversight for Amazon HQ2

On February 2, 2021, Amazon announced the Phase 2 design proposal for its second headquarters, located in Arlington, Virginia, featuring a blend of sustainable architecture and public green spaces.

Aspect Leads Environmental Oversight

In partnership with Amazon and development manager Seneca Group, Aspect (and our subconsultant, Sanborn Head) is leading environmental due diligence, cleanup, environmental construction oversight, and regulatory strategy on Phase 1 (Metropolitan Park property) and Phase 2 (PenPlace property) of this project, as we have for the past several years.

Sustainable Community-Centric Design

Designed by architecture firm NBBJ, PenPlace, is a ground-up development project that will feature 2.8 million square feet of office space across three 22-story LEED platinum-certified buildings, 2.5 acres of green space accessible to the public, and a mix of restaurants, retail, and community gathering areas. Undoubtedly, the most striking HQ2 landmark will be the glass-encased Helix, a counterpart to Seattle HQ1’s Spheres, where employees can work immersed in nature. The 370,000-square-foot building will be open for public tours and will feature landscaped terrain, walking paths, and vegetation native to the region.

Amazon HQ2.jpg

Phase 1 Metropolitan Park Construction Underway

Adjacent to PenPlace, Amazon’s HQ2 Phase 1, designed by architecture firm ZGF is a development at the Metropolitan Park property that also features a 2.8-acre park, lush tree canopies, and public space. Construction at this site is currently underway and features redevelopment of vacant warehouses into two 22-story sustainable office towers and 65,000 square feet of retail and restaurant spaces. Amazon plans to add 25,000 jobs and invest $2.5 billion in Arlington over the next 10 years.

Construction Begins on Aspect’s Innovative Affordable Housing Project

Construction is underway in Seattle’s Mt. Baker neighborhood on two buildings that will house over 150 affordable apartments for the Mt. Baker Housing Association (MBHA).

The first building, called Maddux North, is on the site of a former dry cleaners that released significant amounts of contaminants into the neighborhood soils and groundwater. The second, Maddux South, is across South McClellan Street on land with its own history of contamination from use as a gas station and auto repair shop. The costs to clean up these properties and similarly affected ones around the city usually leave the valuable land beyond the reach of nonprofits like MBHA. In the past few years, Aspect has partnered with the Washington State Department of Ecology and legal experts on the Healthy Housing Remediation Program to help organizations navigate regulatory pathways and fund cleanup efforts to get these urban sites ready for redevelopment as housing. You can learn more about this innovative funding model on our Affordable Housing page.

Aspect’s environmental and geotechnical teams will be on site in the coming months at both Maddux North and South to monitor the shoring and pile installations that will make way for the buildings’ foundations and make sure the excavated contaminated soils are being handled properly.



From Historic Sawmill Dump Site to Seattle Workforce Housing

The historic Pioneer Square district—the front porch to Seattle’s downtown waterfront—is the City’s first neighborhood. The area is shaped by its proximity to the waterfront, active seismology, and over 150 years of urban development, infill, and industry– including housing one of Seattle’s first true startups, the Yesler Lumber Mill.

Built in the early 1850s, the Yesler sawmill was a steam-powered sawmill on the shores of the growing downtown Seattle.
Photo Credit: www.historylink.org

These confluence of factors also trigger specific criteria for building in the neighborhood today – taking historical preservation compliance, seismic codes, and a tricky subsurface into account.

In the heart of the neighborhood, at 165 South Washington Street, Aspect is helping Johnson & Carr, LLC guide the development of an eight-story workforce housing project. The site – currently a vacant pit – formerly housed an apartment building bearing directly on weak urban fill and sawdust. That building was damaged in two separate earthquakes – the 1949 (Olympia) earthquake and 2001 (Nisqually) earthquake, leading to it being condemned and demolished.

The project site, currently a vacant pit that’s sat unused for years, awaits design and construction of a new 8-story workforce housing building.

The Complexity of Seattle’s Original Sawmill Dumpsite

This project site is directly influenced by the past in several ways. It was originally a tidal marsh, used over a century ago, among other things, as a dumping ground for sawdust from the Yesler Mill. This means current project design must grapple with up to 25 feet of sawdust fill in the subsurface. As white settlers filled the surrounding waterfront during the Klondike Gold Rush era, the former tidelands were swallowed up by all manner of new buildings and roads in the haste to infill the neighborhood (as seen on the figure below).In addition, several seismic sources contribute to the seismic risk at the site, including the Seattle Fault Zone which is less than 2 miles away, and the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which can trigger a magnitude 9 earthquake. The seismology, historical uses of the project area, and decades and decades of man-made development have only added to the complexity of building here.

The project site was the dumping ground for sawdust from the nearby Yesler mill. The map on the right shows how much the downtown Seattle shoreline has changed in the last 150 years.

Next Steps: Geotechnical, Seismic, and Engineering Problem Solving

To set the stage for building design and construction in this complicated subsurface, Aspect is conducting several geotechnical and environmental evaluations to develop design recommendations to solve the challenges posed by the historical fill and sawdust at the site. Our detailed evaluations include:

  • Conducting a site-specific seismic response analysis which includes determining dynamic properties of the sawdust to model its behavior under seismic loads

  • Conducting deep foundation design to transfer building loads to underlying competent soils

  • Evaluating and mitigating risk associated with environmental issues which are ubiquitous with the historic fill throughout the Pioneer Square area.

The Vision: Realizing More Affordable Workforce Housing for the Community

These evaluations will be critical to shepherd the development through the City of Seattle’s permitting process and help create more workforce housing in the area. Workforce housing aims to provide a more affordable rental option within high real estate cost areas for workers essential to the local economy, such as service workers, police officers, fire fighters, teachers, nurses, and medical personnel.

When completed, Pioneer Square will gain a new eight-story building with street-level commercial space below seven stories of residential workforce housing.

Dave Cook Discusses Consent Decrees, Cleanup and Ecology’s Healthy Housing Program for Contaminated Sites at the WA Brownfields Conference on May 30, 2019

On May 30, Aspect’s Dave Cook will co-present on affordable housing development from the environmental consulting perspective at the Washington State Brownfields Conference in Spokane.

Brownfield properties represent opportunity. Dave will talk about innovative ways to turn blighted property into affordable/work force housing. Aspect’s first-of-its-kind work on the Mt Baker Housing Association’s Gateway project in the Mt Baker/Rainier Valley neighborhood in Seattle has become an example of what is possible. Mt Baker Housing Association (MBHA), as a non-profit, took on a significantly contaminated site to redevelop as affordable housing where the cost of the cleanup is more than the value of the five properties combined. Dave will join Scott O’Dowd of Ecology, Conor Hansen of MBHA and Mike Dunning of Perkins Coie to describe how these properties were purchased, investigated, liability managed, and the cleanup financed—all keys that made this pioneering project successful and sparking the State’s new Healthy Housing program .

Contact Dave (206.838.5837 and dcook@aspectconsulting.com), or learn more about prospective purchaser consent decrees, funding, and redeveloping contaminated land for affordable housing at https://www.aspectconsulting.com/affordablehousing


Helping Power Seattle's Tech Sector

Seattle City Light is about to unveil its new state-of-the-art substation that will transition this South Lake Union site from a Greyhound bus maintenance facility and parking lot into an “architectural marvel.” From property acquisition and contaminant remediation through design and construction, Aspect completed a full range of environmental and geotechnical services to support the redevelopment of a sleek electrical substation wedged in the heart of Seattle’s tech sector.

Check out this great Seattle Times article on the new substation and peruse some photos of the truly impressive facility.

From Brownfields to 500 Units of Affordable Housing – Aspect in the News

The Daily Journal of Commerce takes a look inside Mt. Baker Housing Association’s pioneering affordable housing work in South Seattle. Aspect, overseeing the environmental effort for the MBHA team, continues to drive the idea of brownfield sites as unique opportunities for affordable housing – including the 160+ unit Maddux project and the 350+ unit Grand Street Commons project.

READ HERE

Learn more: www.aspectconsulting.com/affordablehousing

Setting the Stage for Alaska Airlines’ 128,000-Square-Foot Groundbreaking

Alaska Airlines recently deepened its local roots with a groundbreaking for a new 128,000-square-foot corporate facility in SeaTac.

Aspect is helping set the stage for this by providing environmental and geotechnical services to prep the property for development.  Our team evaluated property-wide environmental conditions and is serving as the geotechnical engineer of record, which includes designing foundations and shoring walls.  Aspect pilot tested and designed a deep stormwater infiltration system to sustainably manage stormwater and get it back into the ground in a more native/natural way. This helped achieve the sustainability goals of the project. We will be on hand to perform construction observation as that kicks off. 

The “Hub” will be a 6-story office building scheduled for construction and then move-in for first quarter 2020.

The May 3rd groundbreaking ceremony was attended by various city, county and state dignitaries, including governor Jay Inslee, Congressman Adam Smith, King County Executive Dow Constantine and Alaska Airlines CEO Brad Tilden, as well as Alaska employees and members from the surrounding community.