Prefab Apartments Slated For Seattle

27 May 2008 - 9:00am

A local commercial property developer has built two prototype units and announced plans to erect a 62 unit complex -- claiming the factory built units will cost 15 percent less then traditional housing.

"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.""

Source: The Seattle Times, May 27, 2008
Bookmark and Share
There are limits to the amount of pollution the environment can absorb without reducing ecosystem services and impairing both human health and the sustainability of our economy.