Amazon loan jumpstarts affordable housing project in South Seattle

Amazon has delivered a different sort of package to a residential developer with plans for an affordable residential complex in South Seattle.

The Seattle-based e-commerce behemoth’s Amazon Equity Housing Fund provided a $16 million loan on undisclosed terms for the 271-unit project, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported.

The loan will clear the way for Housing Diversity Corporation, a for-profit developer, to start construction in coming weeks on Atrium Court at 7324 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S.

The project calls for a total of 148,000 square feet over eight floors on the half-acre site near the Othello light-rail station. The current plan calls for about 2,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.

Housing Diversity has teamed with fellow for-profit developer Nitze-Stagen on the project which also has gotten a $15 million equity investment from Allivate Impact Capital and CEI-Boulos Capital Management.

“Atrium Court is a great example of leveraging private capital and collaboration to build affordable apartment housing,” Senthil Sankaran, managing principal of Amazon Housing Equity Fund, said in a statement. “It models how the private sector can help build long-term, attainably priced housing and is the type of project that our Housing Equity Fund was created to support.”

The latest loan brings Amazon’s total contribution toward various projects to create and preserve housing in the Seattle area to around $550 million, according to the company.

Housing Diversity CEO Brad Padden said the project will get started as Seattle grapples with high costs for housing amid a diminished pipeline or new development, with applications for new apartments down 60 percent compared to the recent peak of 2021.