July 5, 2006

Greenbridge wins award for sustainable community planning

Photo courtesy of King County Housing Authority

The first phase of Greenbridge, King County Housing Authority’s ambitious 100-acre mixed-income housing development in White Center, is celebrating its grand opening on Friday.

The $250 million project, at least six years in the planning, is envisioned as an entire community with parks, a trail system, a branch library, a community center and a YWCA. It is scheduled to be finished by 2013, and will have 1,000 rental units and up to 516 for-sale homes.

The first phase of Greenbridge, which has just been completed, has 82 for-rent townhomes.

Greenbridge recently won a “Legacy of Livable Communities” award from Gov. Christine Gregoire for its innovative approach to creating a more livable community and advancing the goals of the Growth Management Act.

GGLO did the master plan for Greenbridge and most of the housing for the first phase of construction.

A demonstration ordinance from King County allowed the designers to go outside the land use code to put in biofiltration swales to treat stormwater. The ordinance also allowed them to decrease the width of the roads.

“We’re trying to increase the supply of affordable housing and maximize the number of homes we can put on the property,” said GGLO architect Jeff Foster.

A federal public housing grant of $35 million provided seed money for Greenbridge, which also has funding from King County, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the state of Washington and the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, among others.

Park Lake Homes, a low-income public housing project containing 568 units of low-income housing, previously occupied the site.

King County Housing Authority will return 300 of those units to Greenbridge and relocate the others elsewhere in the county.