The Lora Lake Apartments near Sea-Tac Airport will be preserved as work-force housing, ending what had become a bitter stalemate between King County, the Port of Seattle and the city of Burien. King County will buy 162 apartments owned by the port and two adjoining parcels for fair-market value and contribute $1 million toward another housing project in downtown Burien, officials said Tuesday.
Some Lora Lake apartments -- which fell within the safety footprint of Sea-Tac's new third runway -- had to be bulldozed. The rest of the property was slated to be redeveloped to boost Burien's economy. Homeless advocates and King County, which had been temporarily renting the apartments to lower-income tenants while the runway was built, mounted an eleventh-hour campaign to save the remaining apartments. Residents from the area's tent cities were arrested after barricading themselves inside the apartments, and religious leaders held a vigil to protest the planned demolition.
"There is a growing recognition that housing is a non-renewable regional resource that needs to be protected and preserved," Stephen Norman, King County Housing Authority executive director, said in a statement praising the agreement. State Rep. Dave Upthegrove, D-Des Moines, who helped broker the deal, said affordable homes have been torn down around the region with little outcry. But activists made an effective example out of Lora Lake, he said. "Rightly or wrongly, it became a symbol of the area's affordable-housing crisis, and that brought up a lot of emotion," he said.
It also dredged up powerful resentment in the city of Burien, he said, where residents believed they'd already been steamrolled by outside forces into accepting the burden of a third runway. But finding a compromise seemed preferable to more years of expensive litigation, the lawmaker said. Upthegrove and House Speaker Frank Chopp also agreed to seek state funding to help make the downtown Burien apartments affordable for local teachers, relocate a mental-health facility near the airport and help the city plan to redevelop those areas.
King County previously had offered to buy the apartments for $18 million, but they must be reappraised because of changes in the market and predemolition work that drilled holes in floors and walls. It's expected that the apartments would open to low- and moderate-income families by April. The county is considering developing a data-processing, record-storage or sheriff's-evidence facility on the two vacant parcels, according to the agreement.
Burien City Manager Mike Martin said the city might want to buy those properties and redevelop them, but a county project would be preferable to having them languish. Burien officials still strongly object to putting the area's poorest and most vulnerable populations that close to a runway, he said. But because the city didn't own any of the property in question, it didn't have much leverage to challenge those decisions, Martin said.
They were happy to get additional money for the proposed mixed-use development near the county's new transit center, which would offer affordable housing for teachers and seniors. The Burien City Council approved the agreement Monday night in a 4-2 vote, on the condition that the city won't be held responsible if Lora Lake residents sue over future noise or pollution. "There are a lot of hard feelings around this and will be for many years," Martin said. "We're not happy about leaving the apartments there. However, there comes a time ... when you have to do what you can in the best interest of the community."
Source: Seattlepi.com