Prefab Apartments Slated For Seattle

"Developer Unico Properties' answer to affordable housing sits unobtrusively in a quiet plaza in increasingly unaffordable downtown Seattle.

The prototypes have been on display since last fall: two boxy, modular, prefabricated apartment units. Unico says they can be built for less than conventional, "stick-built" apartments and stacked all kinds of ways, like children's building blocks.

"Coming soon to Seattle and Portland urban neighborhoods," a sign at the display promises.

Soon means now.

Unico has filed preliminary paperwork with the city to build the first for-real apartment complex with its factory-built "Inhabit" units on a hilly site on Dexter Avenue North, above Lake Union.

Plans show 62 units, configured in stacks of three and four, atop a concrete base that would contain parking and six "live-work" spaces.

A city design review board got its first look at the plans last month. It called the proposal "promising.""