Developers drawn again to Rainier Valley rail stations

After a two-year hiatus, developers are beginning to stir once again in the neighborhoods around Sound Transit's light-rail stations in Rainier Valley.

They were all over long-neglected Southeast Seattle before the economy tanked. At one point, even before the light-rail system debuted last year, for-profit developers had proposed more than 1,500 apartments or condos within a 10-minute walk of the three rail stations.

The recession put most of those projects on hold, or worse. But demand for apartments is rising across the region — rents are up, vacancies down — and new construction is starting to look more attractive to developers.

The neighborhoods around the Mount Baker, Columbia City and Othello light-rail stations offer an added lure to prospective tenants: the possibility of a quick, carless, cheaper commute.

Long-established developer Harbor Properties said this past week that it now hopes to break ground next spring or summer on a 125-unit project in Columbia City.

Harbor bought the property on South Hudson Street just west of Rainier Avenue South in January. "The light rail created a real impetus," Steve Orser, director of development, said at an Urban Land Institute forum on transit-oriented development.

Harbor's site includes a 1920 single-story brick building, originally an auto showroom, that the developer intends to renovate and offer to retail tenants — perhaps a club with live music, said Denny Onslow, Harbor's executive vice president.

But apartment construction hinges on persuading equity investors to put money into a project in a neighborhood that, unlike West Seattle or Belltown, so far is uncharted territory for new multifamily development, Onslow said.

At the same forum, Seattle Deputy Mayor Darryl Smith, a longtime Southeast Seattle resident and activist, spoke glowingly of nonprofit developer Artspace's plans for a Sound Transit-owned site, until recently a tire store, that is literally in the shadow of the Mount Baker Station.

The proposal: a four-story building with 51 apartments for low-income artists, 10 small retail spaces and a community room on the ground floor — and absolutely no parking. Cathryn Vandenbrink, Artspace's regional director, said the nonprofit is close to acquiring the site from Sound Transit, and is raising money for construction.

She hopes to break ground late next year.

The recession didn't derail two apartment projects under construction and scheduled for completion in 2011:

• The Station at Othello Park, by for-profit developer Othello Partners, a $70-million, six-story complex with 351 units and 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail just across the street from the Othello Station.

President and CEO Steve Rauf said this past week that he's negotiating with four prospective retail tenants, mostly food providers.

• The Claremont, by nonprofit developer Southeast Effective Development (SEED), four blocks from the Mount Baker Station. It's an $18-million, five-story building with 68 low- and moderate-income units and 5,400 square feet of ground-floor retail.

— Eric Pryne

India generates

big Hydrovolts deal

Although a floating turbine that generates electricity has obvious applications for less-developed countries, Burt Hamner focused Seattle-based startup Hydrovolts on the U.S. market because "we're a small company and we don't have the resources to do anything international."

Then he got an offer no businessperson could ignore.

"When someone shows up and wants to give you $250,000 for your first machine and pay for your entire R&D program, with the prospect of a $20 million order by the middle of next year, it does rather focus your attention," Hamner says.

Hydrovolts inked an agreement earlier this month that could eventually put as many as 400 of its turbines into a single large canal that flows into India's Ganges River.

The deal with Ohio-based civil-engineering firm DLZ is Hydrovolts' first commercial contract for its tethered, paddlewheellike Flipwing turbines.

The 25 kilowatt model for DLZ, says Hamner, "will be the size of a bus and will make enough power for about 10 average U.S. homes."

DLZ will then buy three others and test how close together they can be packed into northern India's Chilla Canal, where the engineering company already has permits to produce 10 megawatts. DLZ has the option to buy 400 or more at an expected price of $50,000 apiece; it also got an equity stake in Hydrovolts.

The engineering firm had been in touch before, says Hamner, but the immediate spark for their deal came after Hydrovolts installed a prototype turbine in the Roza Irrigation District canal near Yakima. "I put a video up on YouTube, and within a day DLZ called up."

Hamner says DLZ, a $100 million company that also designs and builds wastewater and water-treatment systems in the central U.S., also is "ramping up to promote Hydrovolts throughout the Upper Midwest." That could bring Hydrovolts the domestic sales it's been pursuing.

But India now looms larger than ever.

"Four hundred million people in India have no electricity at all. The ability to provide power to these villagers is transformative — it's not just lights, it's a whole new economy," says Hamner. "I am waiting for the day I get to go visit a village and see the kids studying with electric lights for the first time."

— Rami Grunbaum