SEATTLE projects
Duwamish Valley
The Georgetown neighborhood has long served the city as a hub for small manufacturing and affordable in-city housing. An increasing number of artists and artisans have established a foothold; meanwhile, the housing stock is no longer affordable to the makers who work here. In 2019 Conlin Columbia co-founded Watershed Community Development, a community-based nonprofit which owns Equinox Studios and is developing The Bend: A Live/Work District, a vertical village of art, permanently affordable housing, and community services. Conlin Columbia, through its affiliate Community Development Partners, serves as the contract master developer for this $400 million project.
Phinney Ridge
The north end is rich in community services such as libraries, transit, schools, and parks, but poor in affordable housing. Conlin Columbia is bringing together an experienced affordable housing developer, Woodland Park Methodist Church, and Ethiopian Community in Seattle to develop more than 60 affordable apartments as well as a new home for the church.
Columbia City
This dynamic neighborhood is losing its diversity due to economic pressures, particularly a sharp drop in housing affordability. Conlin Columbia launched a community project with Jazz Night School, a neighborhood cultural organization which provides music education to adults, and LEMS, a Black-owned bookstore and community center. These two cultural organizations will each own a street-level spaces, debt-free. Above them, roughly 85 new affordable family-sized apartments will be owned and managed by a community based housing developer.
Belltown
Belltown’s old buildings can be saved and repurposed by the creative community. Conlin Columbia is partnered with Common Area Maintenance to save and redevelop the El Rey Building into space for artist residencies, galleries, events, and studios, with two floors of for-rent affordable artist housing above.
Downtown
Downtown residences tend to be either luxury condos or very-low-income rentals. By converting unused office space into workforce housing and by bringing more art and artists into the city center, we can bring balance and energy back to the core. Conlin Columbia has teamed with Base Camp Studio to redevelop the former Gibraltar Tower building into 12 affordable residential condominiums and 15 affordable workspace condominiums for artists.