Structure Type: built works - dwellings - housing - affordable housing

Designers: Wallace, Roberts and Todd (WRT), Architects (firm); Joseph Healey (architect); William H. Roberts (landscape architect); Thomas Todd (landscape architect); David Alexander Wallace (architect/urban planner)

Dates: constructed 1995-2000

32nd Avenue South and South Myrtle Place
NewHolly, Seattle, WA 98118

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The tract was bounded by 32nd Avenue South, South Myrtle Place and South Holly Park Drive.

This public housing tract replaced the original Holly Park, built as defense housing for Boeing workers in 1942-1943. In 1995, the SHA received a $47.1 million Hope VI Grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in order to renovate the neighborhood, which, one commentator noted, "over the years...changed from housing the working poor to housing the poorest of the poor." (See John Sweazy and Cort Gross, "Urban Community Housing," Urban Land, v. 56 no, 11, 11/1997, p. 45.) SHA Director of Development, Doris Koo, led the effort to rebuild on the site's 102 acres. Phase I was to have been completed in 12/1999, and was built by a partnership between SHA and a private equity investor. Because of previous bad experiences with high-rise public housing projects, the SHA selected the town house plan to build for NewHolly.

Hope VI funding became available after Congress's passage of the US Urban Revitalization Demonstration Program in 1992. Hope VI provided money, administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), in conjunction with local agencies, for the rebuilding of a projected 100,000 run-down units of public housing between 1992-2000. Sources vary on the amount of the HOPE VI Grant the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA); Historylink.org indicated that it was $47.1 million, the NewHolly History site (Accessed 11/10/2010) indicated it to have been $48 million, while an article in Urban Land (08/1997, p. 102) said it was $49 million.

PCAD id: 15786