(Image: Community Roots Housing)
A rendering of YouthCare’s planned Constellation Center
By Matt Dowell
Construction is beginning on the Constellation Center, an affordable housing and homeless youth education and employment academy project planned for Broadway and Pine.
The development will bring months of heavy demolition and construction work to the core of Capitol Hill — and add what officials say will be a vital resource for addressing the city’s homelessness crisis while also creating new affordable homes above this busy intersection.
Meanwhile, Community Roots Housing, the Public Development Authority and local affordable housing provider behind the project, has also announced its plans to sell one of its most celebrated new projects — the mass-timber Heartwood building at 14th and Union — as it continues a multiyear process of paring down its holdings.
A spokesperson for Community Roots reported that construction of theConstellation Center began Monday, January 6 at Broadway and Pine.
Initial work will focus on the demolition of the Booth Building’s structural components and the rebuilding of its facade. Plans call for an adaptive reuse project to overhaul and upgrade the existing structures including the Booth Building which will remain three stories along E Pine and Broadway. The new affordable apartment building to the south will rise eight stories on the site of the current surface parking lot.
The development will contain 84 new affordable homes, a mix of studios and 1 bedrooms. They will be available to households with income between 30% and 50% Area Median Income, which translates to $31,620 and $52,700 for individuals. 15 of those units will be set aside for homeless and at risk youth.
CRH is partnering with YouthCare, a Seattle nonprofit working to end youth homelessness. YouthCare will operate The Constellation Center on the property, a facility that will feature education and workforce training, financial empowerment programs, mental health support, housing navigation, and career planning for young people. The center will connect to CRH’s affordable housing development.
The large Booth Building at the corner and the smaller E.H. Hamlin Building have been part of Seattle Central’s South Annex facility. Community Roots purchased the property from Seattle Central to develop the project with YouthCare.
The redevelopment will extend into the 909 E Pine building and accompanying parking lot that hugs the 1534 Broadway Booth Building, joining all of these spaces into one connected structure while preserving the street level facades and auto row scale of the existing buildings.
Community Roots also owns and operates the Broadway Crossing building across the intersection.
Rendering of a Constellation Center classroom (Image: YouthCare)
The start of work on the Constellation project comes as Community Roots is continuing to shift its holdings as it works to overcome challenges in the affordable housing development market including disruptions in supply chain, the past year’s concrete strike, and “changing economics persistent from the pandemic.”
In December, Community Roots notified residents of its intent to sell the Heartwood, the eight-story mass timber affordable housing development at 14th and Union. CHS reported here last summer on the building’s opening and unique design — one of the first apartment buildings in the country to be designed with full exposure of mass timber in the structure.
Community Roots has been re-focusing its portfolio in recent years and in 2024 started the disposition process for for six Capitol Hill and Central District properties that were to remain under federal U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Housing Assistance Payments contracts.
Previous sales have included some of the more expensive to maintain stock held by Community Roots Housing, created in 1976 as Capitol Hill Housing.
Community Roots has continued to open new developments. In October 2024, CRH celebrated the opening of Africatown Plaza in the Central District, which added 126 affordable apartments to the historic 23rd & Union area.
In November 2023, just down from the Broadway and E Pine development, Community Roots opened Pride Place with 118 new units for LGBTQIA+ seniors.
YouthCare, meanwhile has also faced significant challenges. in June 2024, the organization reported plans to reduce its staff by 25%. At the time of the layoffs, ground breaking on the Constellation Center project at Broadway and E Pine was planned for September 2024.
Community Roots says the construction delay was due to a longer than expected process on the project’s closing, which required complex financing combining debt, tax credit equity, and critical funding from the state, county, and city. Closing on the financing happened on December 20th.
The Seattle City Council’s budget efforts to end the year will help buttress the Constellation Center project, boosting funding to the Human Services Department by $4 million in 2025 to support creation of the new center. The budget line item will fund “tenant improvements to the Constellation Center’s proposed 18,000 square foot services hub, in which workforce development and other programs and services will be offered.”
Walsh Construction, also the general contractor for Pride Place, will lead construction. Sidewalk closures at the busy intersection will be limited to working hours and protected pedestrian pathways will be accessible during off hours. Crane assembly on the property will bring a one-time street closure and will happen on a weekend to be announced.
Community Roots and partners have developed a neighborhood access plan which they will use to keep neighboring businesses notified of construction activity.
Construction is slated to complete in spring 2027.
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Man this is being built in the worst location possible. In the middle of nightlife + restaurants + a college
There are many, many, many better places for this. That corner should have been a bar/restaurant with housing on top – and the gas station should be destroyed as well.
Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what are the motives behind all those decisions. They would spend less on building this kind of service, like Youth center and apartment somewhere around Northgate.
There is affordable housing being built on top. Mental health support, housing navigation, and career planning seem like they would be excellent resources for the college students at SCCC and SU, along with the new units.
And at any rate, it’s way better than what’s there now, which is an empty parking lot and an abandoned building.
It is not an abandoned building. It is a building that was owned by Seattle Central that sat vacant for nearly a decade because of this deal arranged by our city and state elected officials to build homeless services at this site. The deal prevented a local developer that had their eye on the site from restoring the building as part of a new development that also would have included the parking lot.
Not everything is business first. That’s why we have govt. To make sure that services are provided. Go monitise somewhere else maybe?
Nobody wants a parking lot. 50% of us on the hill do not own cars. Kids do not drive.
By the way? We are putting buildings in the places with giant parking lots. So there’s that as well.
Yup – we spend huge on lightrail and then decide to build ^affordable^ in the most expensive spot possible. At this point surely you could build many times more in Northgate and quite possibly have a better standard of living as well (nightly chaos just down the road at QFC / nightlife corridor).
You too? Can you imagine? People who live here? OMG! It’s not possible. W/o someone trying to monetise Seattle. Every square inch. We, the people who live here. Like services. We do not own cars.
The “chaos” is left over from covid and is being handled.
Yeah, let’s move homeless youth into one of the city’s top 10 “highest number of overdose responses and crime incidents” areas. What could possibly go wrong!?
Sorry…The NIMBYS only allow buildings like this to be built in a phone booth. lest it spill over into their neighborhoods.
this is a building that will serve the community well and help clean up the “undesirables” that many commenters of this blog complain about. it will have services for homeless and at risk youth. how is this not a good thing?
Any “at risk” youth that lives or comes into this area is immediately going to be targeted by older junkies and dealers. This is a bad, bad idea.
We’ve already turned north of John into one big slumped over junkie, we seem determined to complete that look around the Hill.
dealers and junkies are everywhere.
Unfortunately, it won’t clean up anything on Capitol Hill. Rather it will be a place to send addicts from across the region, further concentrating them in Seattle and ensuring that the drug market on Broadway and on Nagle have a steady stream of clients. They pretend that it will also provide workforce housing but this is a ruse. An investigative journalist should follow up to see once it has been operating for a few years. I predict it will follow the path of 12th and Jackson which went into a death spiral after the shelter was opened.
Yup this is it. Send them to Bellevue, let’s see what happens to the plans then
” it will be a place to send addicts from across the region “
Yes…they will come from other states and all over WA. to our little corner to sober up? Makes zero sense to me.
So doing nothing but monetizing the space is your concept of a plan?
“Unfortunately, it won’t clean up anything on Capitol Hill.”
Yes…It definitely will. Because they are the only ones around here!!! *head desk* *head desk**head desk* *head desk**head desk* *head desk*
You hate housing and youth programs yet whine constantly about homeless and gangs. Just stop talking.
What? You say it’s the worst location. But the place should be a bar with housing on top? YOU move there then. Really? C’mon…
Whoever decided to put even more mental health challenges on this part of the Hill can screw all the way off.
Will this housing be “low barrier”? I’m concerned about dumping more people with addiction problems on this corner.
I think you have the location of the Broadway Crossings and Pride Place buildings swapped, the former is down Broadway a few blocks and the latter is across the street from this development.
I think there could be some great formal and informal partnerships with Pride Place and this new building across the street to help address the disproportionate amount of LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness.
Sorry…Pride Place and Broadway Crossing are across the street. Not “Down Broadway a few blocks”
You’re right, that was a mixup on my part, both are right there across the street.
Still like the idea of partnerships with this development and Pride Place 🙂
Community Roots Housing does a lot of good.
They really do!
people services! excellent! last thing Capitol Hill needs is another rent-driven drinkhole for the money sewer