The coming year looks to be busy for construction in Auburn’s downtown, with one major project south of City Hall poised to pick up its building permit as early as mid-January, and a second perhaps six months behind.
First up will be Teutsch Partners LLC’s project to build for Seattle-based NW Holdings residential apartments at 1st Street Southeast and South Division Street.
Informally, that’s the block between Merrill Gardens and the Sound Transit parking garage, with the little red house on it.
“We’re probably going to be issuing permits for that in January,” Jeff Tate, director of community development for the City of Auburn, said last week.
Teutsch Partners Project calls for seven stories of wood-framed, residential apartments, 227 in all, with two levels of parking offering 252 stalls, and ground-floor retail. On level 2 will be an outdoor plaza, and on floors 6 and 7 outdoor roof decks. The mixed-use building will take up the entire block.
On 36 W. Main St., the block immediately south of City Hall, Levan Auburn Development LLC and Iouannou LLC – doing business as Auburn Partners Development Associates – plan to build the 308,267-square-foot, Legacy Plaza Auburn Senior Living Apartments. This project will likewise take up the whole block, with the exception of the Sun Break Café and its associated parking.
Legacy Plaza’s plans describe a mixed-use building, offering 166 units of independent-living apartments for retired seniors, designed to suit various income levels above commercial space and a subterranean parking garage.
Residents of the one- and two-bedroom apartments will enjoy residential amenities, such as full kitchens tricked out with dishwashers, oven ranges, refrigerators and washer dryer hookups, full bathrooms, and for select units, roll-in showers. Common spaces are to include social rooms, a library business center, a media room, a fitness center and a lobby.
Outdoor amenities are to include private, landscaped courtyards and patios, a sun deck, an adjacent observation room, and a roof deck offering pea-patch community gardens for the residents.
The building’s 207,137-square-foot footprint eliminates 100 parking spaces that exist today, not only on the gravel parking lot west of the red brick city park and the asphalt parking behind that up to 1st Street Southwest but also the parking area just east of A Street Northwest, opposite Oddfellas Pub and Eatery and north of the Sun Break Café. Neither eatery is part of the project.
Sun Break Café owner Bruce Alverson’s parking on site will be reduced to the parking that exists today on the perimeter of his building and on-street parking.
