MidTown Center Deal Emerges With 20% Africatown Stake

The fate of much disputed MidTown Center may finally be decided. Lake Union Partners closed the deal yesterday on the coveted property with a $23.25 million bid. Moreover, the developer agreed to sell 20% of the parcel to the conservation non-profit Forterra who has partnered with Africatown with the shared goal of creating affordable spaces for homes and small businesses to ensure African Americans can continue to call this historically red-lined–and now red-hot–neighborhood home.

Excluded from other neighborhoods and cities with racial covenants and discriminatory lending practices, African Americans called the Central District home because they had few other options. As recently as 1970 the Central District was 73% Black, but it’s now estimated Blacks make up less than 20% of the neighborhood. With a shrinking Black population and mounting displacement pressure, Africatown has made it their mission to write African Americans into Seattle’s future. Many in the Central District’s Black community sees owning the land as key to changing the pattern of displacement and exclusion.

“We need to get our own cranes up,” Black Dot’s community manager Britney said at a protest at MidTown Center after Seattle Police Department dispersed a group camped inside the now re-located Black Dot, a community space and business incubator.

“If we don’t write ourselves into the future, there’s a good chance we won’t be in the future,” Africatown CEO K. Wyking Garrett said last year. “There was intentional exclusion, and now we need to have intentional inclusion.”

The Midtown Center deal propels Africatown toward that goal and vision for the Central District. Forterra and Africatown plan to build 135 affordable homes atop several storefronts and perhaps a small business incubator on their portion of the site. They will use a community land trust model to allow moderate-income residents a path to ownership. Meanwhile, Lake Union Partners aims to build at least 420 apartments, about 125 of those affordable via Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) and MFTE (Multi-Family Tax Exemption).