A design rendering of the building’s unique design

The building as seen under construction last summer. A facade of Corten Metal Panels, Hardie Panel, and Natural Cedar will round out the final shape. (Image: GGLO)

Affordable housing development Africatown Plaza has opened its leasing process, Africatown Community Land Trust CEO Wyking Garrett announced in an interview with Converge Media.

Talking about the changes at 23rd and Union and the development of Midtown Plaza, Garrett said the path for the investments at the corner “really didn’t include us” but, with advocacy and working with developers including Community Roots Housing, “now if you go there, you see us, you see us our journey and experience represented in the art. You see us represented in the actual design of the built environment with Africatown Plaza and its very unique, iconic design.”

The 24th and Spring building’s ground floor has been planned to provide offices for Africatown’s new headquarters, and an affordable space that will include a commercial kitchen to be used by “local culinary entrepreneurs.”

It was developed on the southern end of the Midtown Square block as a 100% affordable, publicly funded project from the Africatown Community Land Trust and Community Roots Housing in an extension of the partnership building on previous collaboration in the Liberty Bank Building at 24th and Union which opened six years ago in what many hope will be a model for equitable development in the Central District and Seattle.

The land Africatown Plaza has risen on was made available thanks to an acquisition intended to help slow displacement in the neighborhood. As part of its acquisition of the properties — a longtime flashpoint in concerns about gentrification and displacement — Lake Union Partners agreed to sell 20% of the block to Forterra, transferring the property into Africatown’s Community Land Trust for development of a 100% affordable project on the south end of the block.

The land where the building stands was the scene of a tense standoff in March, 2017 between activists, police, and the King County Sheriff as authorities evicted Wyking Garrett’s father Omari Tahir-Garrett and cleared the UMOJA Peace Center where he lived along E Spring.

When it opens later this year, the Africatown Plaza development will feature 126 new units for renters making up to 60% of the Area Median Income. The seven-story building will also feature a community room, and “a curated art collection focused on healing, restoring, and celebrating Black and Pan- African communities in Seattle’s Central District.”

Its curved, weathered rainscreen façade inspired by African architecture has already created a striking landmark in the neighborhood. Now the “affordable housing in the heart of the Central District” will soon be open for residents.

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