There are nearly as some ways to explain the El Rey as there are years underneath its (metaphorical) belt. One can define its 12 months of firm (1910), development materials (brick), variety of tales (4), sq. footage (30,000), and crossroads (between Lenora and Blanchard Streets alongside 2nd Avenue in Belltown). One other methodology is to listing the El Rey’s many capabilities over time: At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was a four-story condo constructing with three ground-floor retail areas; by the top, it was a 60-unit psychological well being residential facility. Or lastly, you might describe the El Rey via the existential crossroads it sits on: It would change into artist-focused inexpensive housing, or alternatively, in just some days, it’ll change into a pile of bricks.
The primary group pushing to avoid wasting the constructing is Frequent Space Upkeep (CAM), an arts collective, studio, and gallery in Belltown. At present renting two properties, together with one owned by mogul Martin Selig, CAM started working with an actual property agent final 12 months within the hopes of creating a extra everlasting footprint within the metropolis.
“For the previous 10 years I have been working at Frequent Space, one of many key conversations I’ve is, How will we survive within the metropolis?” says Timothy Firth, a sculptor who co-founded CAM a decade in the past and serves as its director. “That dialog has change into increasingly more potent because the years go on.”
The Belltown arts collective has spent the final decade carving out a house within the metropolis’s shifting panorama, however now, CAM is reckoning with a query as urgent as ever: Can artists maintain their floor in Seattle, or will town’s artistic core be priced out of existence?
CAM’s efforts to search out firmer footing kicked into excessive gear in December 2024 after native development firm BNBuilders reached out to Crucial Ventures Housing Partnership II, which owns CAM’s 2nd Ave property, to conduct staging work on the constructing’s roof. BNBuilders supposed to make use of the roof as a platform to demolish the property subsequent door: the El Rey.
CAM’s 2nd Ave landlords, together with Firth, “obtained right into a broader dialog in regards to the structural stability of the roof and what we needed to do to shore it up,” Firth says. They thought-about combating the demolition, as the 2 buildings have been constructed on the similar time and have been “sinking down into the earth collectively for the previous 100 years,” he defined.
The concept of demolishing the El Rey raised a litany of questions. May CAM’s 2nd Ave constructing structurally survive the demolition of its neighbor? How quickly would demolition occur? And, if it went via, what would change into of the lot the place the El Rey as soon as stood?
The trail to demolition
As the price of residing has risen in Seattle, so too has the frequency and depth with which politicians, renters, landowners, and others have debated what to do about native housing, particularly the scarcity thereof. Climbing rents and property asking costs have led to especial value burdens for folks of coloration, and have inspired folks excluded from high incomes brackets—together with artistic staff—to maneuver someplace extra inexpensive. Amongst different penalties, this sort of displacement and gentrification can raze and homogenize a metropolis’s tradition and id, blurring the strains between its civic essence and the workplace parks and lanyard-festooned fashions of its most prosperous ilk.
Whereas the Harrell Administration has touted “downtown activations” as one option to handle Seattle’s multifaceted hollowing out, residents have responded to those realities with votes in favor of social housing—twice—in addition to a slate of progressive tax insurance policies. In combination, electoral outcomes counsel a public mandate to render Seattle extra dynamic, various, and inexpensive by taxing rich folks and companies, increasing equity-attuned authorities initiatives, and funding middle-income housing.
The El Rey is simply the newest spot to attract public consideration to the area’s structural shortcomings. And, over time, it’s been residence to way more than demolition-focused debates. In September 2019, SOUND Behavioral Well being, a regional non-profit, acquired the El Rey following its merger with Group Psychiatric Clinic (CPC). This expanded SOUND’s community to 18 places, serving 26,000 folks. On the time of the merger, the El Rey functioned as a residential facility for 60 folks, representing 13% of King County’s contracted psychological well being remedy beds.
By August 2020, SOUND had shuttered the El Rey, citing “deferred upkeep,” together with a sewage leak and plumbing issues. The group estimated that bringing the constructing “as much as the place it wanted to be” would value a number of million {dollars}. SOUND’s tax filings present a drop in income from $99.5 million to $79.4 million between 2019 and 2020, whereas govt compensation climbed from $1.4 million to $2.4 million. (In 2023, it hovered round $1.6 million, following practically $3 million in 2022.) Public reimbursements for care have remained comparatively stagnant whereas property working prices have elevated. An October 2020 article by The Seattle Occasions recommended that after SOUND shut down the El Rey and relocated residents, at the least one former El Rey resident grew to become homeless.
In keeping with Nona Raybern, a spokesperson for the Seattle Workplace of Housing (SOH), the El Rey’s operational and companies prices have been “funded by native and federal homelessness {dollars} and the behavioral well being system, together with Medicaid” previous to 2020, and “ended after the mission was now not financially or operationally viable.” The constructing is now monitored by the Seattle Division of Building & Inspections (SDCI) underneath its Vacant Constructing Monitoring program. “The constructing because it presently stands doesn’t meet the well being and security requirements required for human habitation,” Raybern instructed The Stranger through electronic mail.
“We wish to discover a manner that [the El Rey] strengthens our presence in Belltown as a result of we expect there’s a reasonably large want for our companies in Belltown, particularly with the homeless inhabitants,” Paul Eisenhauer, SOUND’s former Chief Monetary Officer, instructed The Seattle Occasions in 2020 on the time of the El Rey’s closing. “We’re hoping to discover a manner to try this. I simply don’t know what it’s at this level.”
SOUND’s calculus and priorities have shifted since then. Harm to its fireplace panel, electrical techniques, and plumbing led to the constructing’s water and electrical energy being lower. The town then ordered SOUND to place the constructing on fireplace watch: round the clock, in-person supervision.
“As a result of extent of decay, restoring the El Rey would require vital capital funding to make it liveable whilst an emergency shelter. After assessing the constructing with King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), it was deemed unsuitable for such functions,” Raybern explains.
“In its present state, sustaining the vacant property prices roughly $45,000 month-to-month attributable to needed fireplace watch and insurance coverage protection bills,” SOUND Chief Operation Officer Man Delisi instructed The Stranger in an emailed assertion. “Demolishing the constructing would considerably cut back prices whereas permitting for a future use that aligns with the property’s present covenant.”
If allowing comes via, SOUND and BNBuilders may start tearing down the El Rey as early as April.
Transferring possession & CAM’s imaginative and prescient
SOUND “owns” the El Rey insofar because it possesses a positive mortgage on the property from SOH. Connected to the mortgage is a property constitution stipulating 60 affordable-housing items for residents incomes as much as 30% of the realm median revenue, prioritizing consumption from native shelters.
In conversations with SOUND COO Delisi, Firth discovered that SOUND can be open to transferring possession of the El Rey (and its mortgage of round $2 million) somewhat than knocking it down. Ongoing fireplace watch prices along with the uncertainties of redevelopment after demolition—partially attributable to present rates of interest and the rising value of development supplies attributable to latest tariffs—could assist a switch pencil out from SOUND’s perspective.
With rising prices of residing in Seattle along with stagnant wages for artistic staff, CAM believes that offering inexpensive housing is a step towards addressing this systemic problem. As a community-arts group, CAM intends to reconvert the El Rey to create 10 inexpensive housing items for artists at 80% space median revenue.
A repurposed El Rey would additionally embody a ground devoted to short-term residency areas, addressing the necessity for group organizations to cowl lodging prices for visiting artists, mentors, and different friends, which frequently strains their budgets. “There is no different place in Seattle that provides inexpensive flex residency house for some other group all over the place,” Firth says. “What a radical thought, we thought, to take certainly one of these flooring and have it’s a useful resource for all these different … organizations that usher in artists and performers from different cities, or that even have in-city residential packages, and provides them actually inexpensive, lovely, flex residency house.”
Workplaces for native orgs and retail house would take up the underside two flooring, together with a mixed-use efficiency venue. CAM has secured $500,000 in funding from philanthropic sources since January as a part of these efforts.
Regulatory approvals
However CAM’s imaginative and prescient for the El Rey is way from assured and requires navigating a hodge podge of Seattle housing- and property-related entities. At the start is the SOH, which must change the El Rey’s constitution to make the CAM-led mission attainable.
“Usually, [SOH] will solely approve reinvestment in current rental housing when the price to protect is lower than or equal to the price to provide substitute housing at related affordability ranges, and when preservation is not going to adversely impression the power of the supplier to keep up the remainder of its portfolio or to create new, wanted inexpensive houses,” explains Reybern, the Workplace of Housing spokesperson. She provides that SOH has “had early conversations with Frequent Space Upkeep a few switch” however no choices have been made, and they’ll proceed their analysis as soon as a plan is submitted that meets the required standards.
Firth acknowledges that these proposals contain the thorny query of amending a psychological health- and low income-focused property constitution—particularly amidst a scarcity of psychological well being beds. He helps lowering the variety of items required within the constructing in order that they’ll supply studio-sized items, rising the revenue necessities to 80% of the realm’s median revenue, and hanging the mental-health focus of the constitution. In his view, upholding the unique constitution isn’t possible on a small lot the dimensions of the El Rey, the place SOUND beforehand housed multiple particular person in some rooms to fulfill its statutory obligations. CAM is trying to retain some quantity of inexpensive housing within the neighborhood, and convey it again inside a shorter interval, avoiding the uncertainty that may include the constructing’s wholesale demolition.
“There’s this sliver of an opportunity that it could actually change into housing; that feels actually hopeful and thrilling to me,” Firth says. “I believe that form of contributes to the broader spectrum or ecosystem of livability, survivability within the metropolis … We’re a small group actually making an attempt to do the perfect work that we are able to, and we see folks and a whole lot of techniques failing within the metropolis, and we’re simply making an attempt to carry on to any little piece that we are able to.”
CAM would additionally face an uphill battle financially, and would most certainly must safe funding from the Equitable Growth Initiative in addition to Doorways Open. To not point out wrangling the possibly unexpected prices that include trying to retrofit a 125-year-old constructing for multipurpose use.
For now, all eyes stay on SDCI. Will SOUND get the inexperienced mild to demolish the El Rey? Come April, Belltown will be the nascent residence to a repurposed affordable-housing mission—or one other razed lot.
