News Release
King County Housing Authority
600 Andover Park West, Tukwila WA 98188
For more information contact: Rhonda Rosenberg, KCHA, Communications
Director, (206) 574-1185; Elaine Kraft, Office
of King County Executive, Communications Director,
(206) 296-4063; Tim Trohimovich, City of Redmond, (425) 556-2417
October 10, 2000
ACHIEVING "SMART GROWTH" THROUGH INNOVATIVE PARTNERSHIP:
It's Eco-Logical
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2000
10:30 a.m. to Noon, program begins at 10:30 a.m.
2650 152nd Ave. NE, Redmond • Site of former Overlake Park & Ride
next to Group Health Hospital
EXCELLENT PHOTO OPPORTUNITY – CONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS!
King County Executive Ron Sims and U.S. Congressman Jay Inslee
to celebrate the construction of the first development of its kind
in the U.S.—linking
affordable housing, a day-care facility and a park-and-ride transit
center on a single site near the Eastside’s high-tech employment
centers.
Seattle– Love and marriage. Horse and carriage.
Housing and transit?
To encourage better land use, increase transit
use, and create stronger communities, King County,
the King County Housing Authority, the City of Redmond and the Federal
Transit Administration
don’t want one without the other. They have joined with other
nonprofit and private partners to undertake an
innovative Transit-Oriented-Development in Redmond, Wash.
U.S. Congressman
Jay Inslee, Redmond Mayor Rosemarie
Ives, King County Executive Ron Sims, and other
partners will celebrate this SmartGrowth initiative
at a groundbreaking event on Friday, Oct.
20.
The transit-oriented development will combine:
•
308 units of moderate-income workforce housing
•
a 4,500 square-foot day care facility and
•
a Metro park-and-ride transit center
–located within a stone’s throw of the Microsoft campus
and other major Eastside employers.
"At last, it
will be possible for families who work in this
community to live in this community," said Mayor Ives. "Because
of the skyrocketing costs of housing on the Eastside,
we’ve been
struggling to find ways to keep our city affordable
to our teachers, medical assistants, clerical
workers, and service workers. This project
is a bellwether in real estate development."
County Executive
Sims agrees. "This development represents the
intelligent use of County-owned land. By thinking
up – creating
affordable housing and child care on top of a
former park-and-ride lot – not
out, we’ve tripled the use of this valuable space. This development
is an important piece in helping Redmond keep
its urban center vital while making it easier for King County to achieve
its growth management
goals. By locating the transit center with housing
and near jobs, more Redmond residents can take advantage of our County-wide
bus system.
The idea is completely eco-logical." Sims said the County is
sponsoring several other such projects, making use of Metro Transit’s
convenient routes and success at getting people out of their cars
and onto the
bus.
"This is an important model," said King County Housing
Authority Executive Director Stephen Norman. "Partnering private
capital with public resources allowed us to create
a new approach to appropriately
accommodate this region’s growth."
KCHA administers a
range of quality affordable rental housing
programs for residents of King
County, as well as providing homeownership
opportunities to lower-income working
families. The Authority
serves more than 12,000 households, including
families, the elderly, disabled persons, and other
special-needs households.
The Transit-Oriented Development Section of
the King County Department of Transportation
has been working on bus-related TOD joint development
projects since 1998. Other
King County projects
are underway in Renton, Seattle and Shoreline.
A TOD is a compact, mixed-use activity area
centered around a transit station that, by
definition, encourages residents, workers, and
shoppers to drive their cars less and ride mass transit
more.