HomeMy WebLinkAbout062915_Governor Smart Community Award
website: rentonwa.gov
City of Renton - 1055 South Grady Way
Renton, WA 98057
June 29, 2015
For more information contact:
Chip Vincent, Community & Economic Development Administrator, 425-430-6588
Preeti Shridhar, Deputy Public Affairs Administrator, 425-430-6569
Mark Gropper, Executive Director, Renton Housing Authority, 425-226-1850, ext. 223
Renton Receive 2015 Governor’s Smart Communities Award
Unique Kirkland Avenue Townhomes Project Earns City Prestigious Award
RENTON: For an unprecedented fourth year, the City of Renton has been awarded the Governor’s Smart
Communities Award. The 2015 award was presented on June 26, at the Association of Washington Cities
conference in Wenatchee in the Judges Merit category for the Kirkland Avenue Townhomes. This project is a
collaboration between the City of Renton and the Renton Housing Authority (RHA).
“We are honored to receive this prestigious award for a fourth consecutive year and to be recognized for the
state-of-the-art Kirkland Avenue Townhomes,” said Mayor Denis Law. “This award is a well -deserved
recognition of the hard work and innovation of all our partners and a testament to what is possible through
public private partnerships”.
The Kirkland Avenue Townhomes is the first publicly funded, affordable, multi-family modular construction
project in Western Washington. The townhomes are part of the city’s Sunset Area Community Revitalization
effort and provide housing for veterans and one-for-one, low-income replacement housing as part of the
RHA’s Sunset Terrace Redevelopment. The 18-unit Kirkland Avenue Townhomes project provides sixteen
Section 8 Housing Choice vouchers and two VASH vouchers to ensure that the eighteen housing units are
affordable.
In announcing this year’s awards, Governor Inslee said, “These forward-thinking projects help create and
sustain a thriving economic climate and strengthen our ability to lead in the global economy . Washington is a
great state in which to live, work and play, thanks to visionary leadership in our local communities such as
those we celebrate today.”
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Besides funding from RHA and the City of Renton, additional support was received from the Washington State
Housing Trust, the King County Housing Finance Program, and the Washington Community Reinvestment
Association. In addition to funding, the City of Renton also waived building permit and system development
charges and mitigation fees to support the construction of the project. Multiple funding sources are typically
necessary to support affordable housing projects but this project received the most local funding to date from
RHA and the city for any project of this type built in Renton.
The Kirkland Avenue Townhomes development team included: RHA, developer; Shelter R esources Inc.,
development consultant; Schemata Workshop, Inc., architect; SvR Design, civil engineer/landscape architect;
Pavilion Construction, primary contractor; Champion Homes, modular sub-contractor; and Inslee Best Doezie
& Ryder, PS, legal counsel.
“The City of Renton is doing a wonderful job of investing time and energy into the future of the Highlands
neighborhood, and the completion of the recently opened Kirkland Avenue Townhomes is emblematic of the
type of housing we envisioned for the Sunset Area,” said Mark Gropper, Executive Director of the Renton
Housing Authority.
For more information, visit rentonwa.gov.
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