Two new senior living apartment complexes are coming to Kent, including a six-story downtown building with 252 units.
The Reserve at Kent will start to go up next year at 623 W. Meeker St., in a vacant field behind KeyBank, said Ben Wolters, city economic and community development director in a report last week to the City Council.
California developer AVS Communities is behind the project. The company has new senior housing facilities in Renton and Everett and planned projects in Auburn, SeaTac, Lynnwood, Tumwater, Lacey and Sequim, according to the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.
“Six stories will be one story taller than The Platform and Dwell at Kent Station,” Wolters said about the new apartment complexes built downtown in the past two years. “It’s a senior apartment complex with all of the amenities you would hope to have in a senior home, including an indoor pool, two courtyards, a rooftop deck, an exercise room, a game room, a yoga room, a computer room, a library and a beauty shop.”
The Reserve is in the permitting process with the city.
“It will be a major project downtown and very visible as it comes out of the ground,” Wolters said.
North Park complex
Plans are also underway by Legacy Affordable Retirement Communities (LARC) to build a three-story, 131-unit senior apartment complex at a vacant, triangular-shaped lot at 1001 First Ave. N.. The property sits just north of the North Park neighborhood and southeast of Highway 167. Construction could start as soon as June. The company has a retirement facility in Olympia.
“It is a more modest project with about 131 units and is more of the garden style we have had,” said Wolters, who added the complex will have similar amenities to the Reserve at Kent.
The housing complex will be for people who are at least 55 years old and who earn less than 60 percent of the area median income, which means that half of the people earn more than the median, and half of the people earn less. The area median income, $90,300 in 2016 in King County) is determined by The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The city will require numerous off-site improvements by the developer, who bought the property from the Morford family. Crews must complete a sidewalk along First Avenue North from the site to West Cloudy Street and install a sidewalk along West Cloudy. Crews must also build a new street along the frontage of the property to connect First Avenue to Third Avenue.
City officials will name the new street West Sipe to honor the Sipe family homestead in the North Park neighborhood. A family member still lives in North Park.
Neighborhood residents asked the city to name the street after the family, said City Councilwoman Tina Budell, who lives in North Park.
The city fire marshal picks street names and initially planned to name the street South 234th. Wolters said city procedure for naming streets is monitored by the fire marshal because street names are key to dispatch firefighters to respond to a call, but there are exceptions for street names that can be obtained, such as in this case.
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