Remember the 1,000 apartments pitched for Tumwater? Work expected to begin summer 2023
Earlier this year a proposal for a massive apartment complex emerged before the city of Tumwater that envisioned nearly 1,300 units west of I-5 between Tumwater Boulevard and Israel Road.
The project is called Yorkshire, and although it’s not quite as large as first proposed, its 1,150 units still make it one of the largest apartment proposals in the county, if not the largest.
It’s another example of how the Thurston County housing market has shifted away from single-family homes to multifamily development after the Great Recession. Apartments now dot downtown Olympia, they have sprouted throughout northeast Lacey and are pushing into Tumwater in a big way.
“We are a growth state,” said Glenn Wells, an Olympia architect and co-developer of Yorkshire through a company called Fourth Street Housing LLC.
From 2008 to 2014, a period that includes the Great Recession, all housing-related construction effectively stopped, Wells said, creating a huge deficit in housing. And yet the region continues to attract new residents, he said.
“We believe demand is going to be strong in Western Washington for the foreseeable future, regardless of what’s happening in the rest of the country,” he said.
Demand, combined with a housing deficit, has perhaps revealed itself most notably in the form of soaring single-family home prices, which have risen above a median price of $500,000 in Thurston County.
Not only does that create demand for apartments, but residents are staying in them longer because of the expense of buying, said Tom Schrader, a commercial and residential real estate broker at Re/Max Parkside Affiliates who has worked closely with Fourth Street Housing.
There also are those who are selling a home to downsize into an apartment, waiting to see if single-family inventory would improve, he said.
Yorkshire continues to advance. Fourth Street Housing acquired the 25.5-acre site last month. Multiple buildings are proposed and construction of the first building is expected to begin next summer. Once that building is finished and leased, they will move on to the construction of the next building and remaining buildings as the best way to “manage risk,” Wells said.
“The required open space for the project is about 4 acres and because of the urban nature of the design, we’re planning on about 5.5 acres of open space and are saving well over 200 mature trees,” he said.
The developers also plan to seek a 12-year multifamily tax exemption that requires that at least 20 percent of the units offer what Wells called “low to moderate” rents, for those earning 83 percent to 93 percent of area median income.
According to Thurston Regional Planning Council data, area median income here was estimated at $81,693 for 2021, seventh highest in Washington state.
Other elements of Yorkshire: a swimming pool, a fitness area in each building, 10,000 square feet of commercial space, a 300-plus unit storage building and a clubhouse with a larger fitness area.
Yorkshire is not Fourth Street Housing’s first project.
The company was created to develop Merritt Manor, which is considered affordable housing (serving those with 60-80 percent of area median income). It opened on Martin Way in Olympia.
From there, they developed the nearby Mulberry apartments and are under construction on more apartments in the same area called Hearthstone. Both Mulberry and Hearthstone are considered market-rate developments, Wells said.
North of the proposed Yorkshire site in Tumwater, Fourth Street has completed the 141-unit Rockwell apartments and expects to begin work this year on Kingswood, an 181-unit apartment project just east of the Rockwell site. Both have or will offer a percentage of units at low to moderate rents, he said.
Tumwater Community Development Director Mike Matlock was unavailable to comment on the Yorkshire proposal last week. However, Yorkshire first came before city officials in January 2022, received preliminary site plan review in June, and is set for formal site plan review on Sept. 22.
“There are certainly benefits to the city,” said Wells, citing traffic mitigation fees and the infrastructure associated with the project, “and I would say the city supports it.”
