July 10, 2024
MUP finally arrives for Yesler Terrace hotel
Real Estate Editor
As the DJC first reported three years ago, Prospera Hotels has been planning a hotel on the Yesler Terrace campus.
That proposal for 718 Yesler Way, designed by Johnson Braund, received its master use permit from the city on Monday.
Exxel Pacific will build the eight-story, now 196-room project. No start date has been announced. Based in Southern California, Prospera acquired the bare land from Seattle Housing Authority last year, then paying $5.2 million.
No hotel brand is obviously attached to the project. Prospera has developed hotels for several different flags and operators. Construction will be five stories of Type V-A wood over three levels of Type I-A concrete.
Total project size, including a restaurant and amenities, is about 148,000 square feet. That includes 32 structured parking stalls, plus a few bike stalls for guests and staff. Rooftop solar panels are indicated.
Prospera’s team also includes PanGeo, geotechnical engineer; KPFF Consulting Engineers, civil and structural; Bush, Roed & Hitchings, surveyor; McCullough Hill Leary, legal; Geyer Coburn Hutchins, landscape architect; Wild Muse Interiors; Robison Engineering, MEP; Been Engineering, envelope; SSA Acoustics; ILC Studios, lighting; and Clevenger Associates, kitchen and laundry consultant.
The 30-acre redevelopment of Yesler Terrace has thus far been mostly new apartment buildings from private developers and SHA itself, plus a new clinic for Northwest Kidney Centers. Only a small amount of retail has been developed — with no grocery store for the radically transformed neighborhood.
All the old SHA buildings from the 1940s are gone, and the mixed-income neighborhood now has more permanently affordable units than before. The unit mix is now roughly 1,500 affordable and 2,500 market-rate units, with some still under construction. Only one or two sites remain left to develop.
Among those, Kaiser Permanente will reportedly sell its undeveloped Yesler Terrace land to King County, possibly to result in an expansion of the neighboring Harborview Medical Center, but that deal hasn’t been confirmed or recorded by the county.
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