Homebuilding activity is anemic near the three light rail stations opening this month.
On December 6th, South King County will see the opening of three new light rail stations. When visitors arrive at the stations, they’ll find relevantly barren station areas. Compared with other recently opened stations, the three station areas, covering parts of Kent, Des Moines, and Federal Way, are seeing very little transit-oriented development added or planned.
The extension suffers from a freeway alignment that is not conducive to transit-oriented development (TOD), including a station that is among the most prohibitive to TOD. South King County’s weak real estate market also lags the rest of the region. In a time of high interest rates and climbing construction costs, builders do not appear ready to make many bets in areas like South King, where prevailing rents are relatively low.
Without much private interest, the primary development activity seen around this extension was spurred by public entities. The nonprofit and public sector has not been able to spur homebuilding at anywhere close to the rate seen near Sound Transit’s busiest stations, where market interest has been more robust. Downtown Bellevue, for example, has about 14,000 homes in the development pipeline or recently added. Downtown Redmond has added 5,300 homes over the past two decades, with more on the way.
In contrast, The Urbanist’s review of development plans near the three new stations about to open with Federal Way Link found just over 3,000 homes in the pipeline, the lion’s share riding on one phased megadevelopment near Federal Way Downtown Station, which could take a long time to get fully completed.
Squeaking Along In Des Moines and Kent
The only station with recently completed midrise development is the Kent Des Moines station. In 2018, Highline College opened Highline Place, student housing with 160 beds between 44 units. The five-story building includes 14,766 square feet of retail space and a parking garage for 38 cars.
Highline Place’s second phase was planned to begin construction in 2019, but appears to have been a victim of the pandemic. If the project is still alive, it would be a five-story building with 207 units and 195 parking stalls. The building would not be exclusive to students.
Other projects planned around the Kent Des Moines Station include a Sound Transit TOD project and a large private development. Directly adjacent to the station will be Mercy Housing North’s Multicultural Village. The project is a 233-unit affordable housing building that will also include childcare, childcare training facilities, and a family resource center. It’ll be built on surplus land from the extension’s construction.
The last project in the station area is the Suton/Kent Ridge View Mixed-Use Development. The project is a nine-building development on a 12.7-acre lot with 564 units with 675 parking spots — a high parking ratio so close to a light rail station. The development is planned to include a seven-story mixed-use building with 140 units and café, two five-story 140-unit buildings, and six three-story buildings with 24 units each, and one detached 5,000-square-foot club house.
In addition to obstacles presented by the I-5 chasm, development opportunities east of the station are hampered by the presence of the Midway Landfill, a contaminated 60-acre superfund site fenced off from the neighborhood. The site itself would be extremely difficult to redevelop, given the cost of removing and mitigating waste, and also not a terribly attractive neighbor for TOD in the area.
Star Lake: An Unfortunate Station Area
Star Lake Station is located between I-5, its own parking garage, and the McSorley Creek Wetlands. There are no new or active multifamily or mixed active projects in its station area. The station area has some older multifamily buildings, an elementary school, an ongoing single family subdivision project, and houses of worship. Without a robust real estate market, everything surrounding the station will be prohibitive to new dense development.
Even with a stronger real estate market, major obstacles remain. The McSorley Creek greenbelt consumes much of the land near the station, and the I-5 interchange eats up another sizable chunk. That creek is surely a McSore spot for this project, after it also contributed to a construction delay that pushed the project back by more than a year.
The opposite side of I-5 was always going to be less attractive to TOD, but in this case it’s further complicated by crossing jurisdictional boundaries. Kent’s border ends at S 272nd Street. The neighborhood around Star Lake itself is in incorporated King County as part of the “Lakeland North” Census-designate place. It’s an area dominated by single family homes — and doesn’t appear in a hurry to change that.
Suburban Retrofit One Day
Federal Way Station also lacks any new multifamily or mixed projects, the newest multifamily project opened in 2009. There are some early and ongoing plans to build out the station area. Last April, The Urbanist reported on a green light given to a 30-year development agreement on what was City-owned land. The agreement looks to kickstart Federal Way’s “Downtown” with hundreds and perhaps even 1,000-plus housing units. Other uses, such as retail, office space, a new city hall, and a park are all possible under the agreement. On the site, the city’s performing arts center is a relatively new addition, opening in 2017.
Additionally, Sound Transit is offering two parcels next to the Federal Way Station for affordable housing development. The two parcels amount to 1.88 acres of land. Another two sites will be available for affordable housing development once more is done to understand and plan around the contamination on the sites. Altogether, Sound Transit will be transferring around six acres of land to affordable housing developers that could yield another 1,000 units of housing, if built out to maximum zoned capacity.
Federal Way has created some of their own obstacles to multifamily housing development, levying very high impact fees on apartment developers, while giving single family developers more favorable treatment. The City also periodically imposed multifamily development moratoriums in the 2010s. High fees and an uncertain approval process has contributed to less interest among apartment builders.
A Slow Start of TOD in South King County
All in all, the Federal Way Extension stations are by far the least prepared to take advantage of the influx in transit capacity. Only one housing project has been completed in the past 10 years and progress has been minimal on building a pipeline of housing. The lack of homebuilding along the line definitely invites second guessing that the SR 99 alignment, closer to existing housing and developable sites, would have been superior to the I-5 alignment that Sound Transit ultimately selected.
Kent Des Moines Station has a pipeline prepared with more than 1,000 units in some stage of permitting.
Federal Way Downtown’s development appears to still be in the planning phase, with a single permit not in sight for its two project clusters that are moving. Early groundwork is underway, but new housing in the station area is still years away. Theoretically, more than 2,000 homes plus commercial uses and amenities could emerge from these two projects.
Based on what’s in the pipeline right now, around 3,000 new homes could come online near the three Federal Way extension stations in the coming years. That’s less than all the housing built and planned near Shoreline South Station alone, and public entities didn’t directly kickstart any of that homebuilding and planning. Transit-oriented development is coming to South King County, but it’s coming slowly.
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