The Federal Way City Council gave the green light Tuesday night to a long-term development agreement that could bring as many as 1,600 homes and hundreds of thousands of square feet of new office and retail space to a long-vacant lot steps from the city’s coming light rail station. The planned development, called TC-3, will be a major step forward for an area that will remain the southern terminus for Sound Transit’s Link light rail network between 2026 and the opening of an extension south to Tacoma Dome nearly 10 years later, but which has been slow to add transit-oriented development.
Federal Way has been sitting on the parcel, home to a demolished former Target store, since 2014 when it was purchased with the express intention of turning it into a mixed-use development. The Federal Way Performing Arts Center (PAC) sits on the property’s southwest corner and will remain on the block, with homes and retail built up around it.
Even though construction issues have caused a two-year delay to Federal Way Link’s opening, the adjacent redevelopment won’t be ready as light rail arrives in 2026. However, the first phase might not be too far behind.
The 30-year development agreement with Trent Development sets the property up to be developed in stages, with deadlines to apply for permits to move forward with four phases laid out until 2042. The first deadline is set for January 1, 2027, with the largest building, which is expected to consist of around 350 units of housing, set to go first. And as part of that first phase, Trent will be funding design work on a so-called “civic plaza” at the center of the site, which will remain under public ownership and become a new gathering point in what Federal Way hopes to become a burgeoning downtown.
“This will be our first investment in our downtown, beside what the City has already invested,” said Keith Niven, Federal Way’s community development director ahead of Tuesday night’s unanimous council vote. “From a private developer standpoint, this will be the first private development that will invest and set the market for the rest of the properties [downtown] and the expected land value, so this is a big deal in terms of getting other properties to follow suit.”
The agreement requires one more procedural vote at the Federal Way City Council in two weeks, but the outcome seems all but assured after several years of work to get to this point, with a full 12 months of negotiations between the City and Trent Development after the council voted to award a letter of intent to the developer last year.
The overall project may also include a new Federal Way city hall building, though city leaders have until 2028 to decide whether to move forward with siting it there. Earlier this year, Mayor Jim Ferrell described the City as just beginning a “visioning process” to determine whether moving city hall to the parcel makes sense, or if additional space for city staff should be added to a new operations and maintenance facility being built elsewhere in the city.
Rather than require subsidized affordable housing units, which would otherwise be required under Federal Way’s land use code, the agreement requires Trent Development to offer a 20% discount on rents for all of the planned retail spaces set to be built at ground level facing the new civic plaza, a requirement that would be in place for 50 years.
On the other side of the nearby transit parking garage, Sound Transit is moving forward with developing around six acres of parcels it originally acquired as part of light rail station construction, set to become a fairly substantial amount of subsidized housing — though an exact number of units isn’t yet known. “Because we’re going to get a significant amount of affordable units on the Sound Transit property, we said ‘alright, let’s trade that for subsidized lease rates to get those businesses occupied and filled,'” Niven said.
Federal Way has been making moves in fits and starts to turn the area around its transit center into a more dense, walkable downtown area for decades now. In 2007, the city purchased four acres immediately across the street from transit, but the timing of that move immediately before the Great Recession meant that it didn’t move forward and an interim use for the site as a downtown park was ultimately made permanent. Discussions around incentivizing developers to come to “downtown” Federal Way date to even earlier.
“If these decisions had been made at that point, because there were developers interested, we would definitely be in a different place at this point,” said Councilmember Susan Honda. “So I think this is an extremely important vote tonight.”
For now, Federal Way still has a very long way to go, with most of the land around the coming light rail station totally dominated by surface parking lots and big box retail stores. And the project given the green light this week includes a fairly substantial amount of parking, with the option on the table for Federal Way to add in city funding to create even more down the line.
“It’s not a true one-to-one [ratio] but it’s pretty close, it’s a very big parking structure. We don’t feel it needs to be a one-to-one ratio given its proximity to the light rail station but we definitely recognize that this area is still fairly car-centric,” said Trent Mummery of Trent Development last fall in response to a question about the parking. “Of all the developments that we’re doing, it’s the highest parked ratio that we’ve done within the last 10 years.”
While the project is set to create some internal streets that are somewhat less auto-focused than most streets in Federal Way — without being fully pedestrianized — there aren’t many signs that the City is ready to start looking at making its existing streets substantially more pedestrian friendly. One signature project that Federal Way has been pursuing for many years is an expensive street revamp called “the dip,” which would dig a trench for eight-lane S 320th Street to keep traffic moving and allow pedestrian traffic above on 21st Avenue S, which leads directly to this project. It’s a way to create a pedestrian-focused corridor in a uniquely Federal Way fashion, but doesn’t really bode well for the rest of downtown.
Tuesday’s vote was a hopeful first step toward a slightly more walkable and dense Federal Way around one of the region’s more high profile light rail stations, and one that ideally sets the stage for more positive movement in that direction.
Ryan Packer lives in the Summit Slope neighborhood of Capitol Hill and has been writing for the The Urbanist since 2015. They report on multimodal transportation issues, #VisionZero, preservation, and local politics. They believe in using Seattle's history to help attain the vibrant, diverse city that we all wish to inhabit. Ryan's writing has appeared in Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, Bike Portland, and Seattle Bike Blog, where they also did a four-month stint as temporary editor.