WARRENTON — The newly christened Chelsea Gardens neighborhood could become the testing ground for a more economical model of developing workforce housing.

Trillium House at Chelsea Gardens, the working name of a four-story, 42-unit apartment complex being planned by Walsh Construction Co. near Home Depot, was awarded just over $1 million in highly coveted federal low-income housing tax credits that will ultimately net the project around $10 million after their sale to investors.

The apartment building would include a mix of standardized one-, two- and three-bedroom units for between $800 and $1,000 a month, along with a garden and play area. The project would be transferred to the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority and focus on workers making between 30% and 60% of the area median income.

Stuart Emmons, a local architect and planning consultant, said Walsh Construction tasked him two years ago with finding a site for an apartment complex. Walsh Construction specializes in affordable housing and started crafting a set of cost-effective design and construction principles that Mike Steffen, the company’s director of innovation, said can save up to 25% in development costs.

“I grew up in the Midwest, and I call it commonsense farmers’ ideas,” Steffen said.

The principles focus on simplicity and efficiency, including one design for each size of apartment, stacking apartments to more efficiently run utilities, avoiding complicated architectural features and using materials that will last the longest. They were developed in response to quickly escalating construction costs that have challenged affordable housing projects.

The North Coast real estate market is booming because of second homes, vacation rentals and people moving to the area. Most new projects have been market-rate and largely unaffordable for many blue-collar workers.

“For me and for Walsh, it’s a mission for us,” Emmons said. “It’s something we desperately need here … People who work at Walmart, people who work at McDonald’s, people who work in Pacific Seafoods and Bornstein (Seafoods) and so on can’t afford the housing here, even if they’re fully employed.”

Strategically located

Emmons looked at 11 different sites in Clatsop County for the housing project, ultimately setting on a piece of land in Chelsea Gardens, a strategically located triangular neighborhood bounded by U.S. Highway 101, state Highway 104 and the North Coast Retail Center. The neighborhood is close to schools, public transportation and out of flooding and tsunami zones, making it a prime location for development.

Warrenton leaders saw the potential of the neighborhood and of traffic concerns if too much commercial was added. They created a master plan for Chelsea Gardens envisioning a mix of denser housing, commercial spaces and open areas for residents.

Trillium House will likely become the neighborhood’s first new multifamily development.

“I think it’s exciting, because sometimes it just takes something to get things kick-started,” Mayor Henry Balensifer said. “ … And the concept plan shows a garden, it shows a park, a little playground area. It’s everything basically the city has been trying to strive for.”

Ross Cornelius, a client services manager for Walsh Construction, helped assemble the funding package for Trillium House.

“I wish there was a simpler way for affordable housing to get developed,” he said. “But typically it’s assembling a bunch of different sources and getting it to all work together to make the project happen.”

The federal housing tax credits will provide the majority of funding. But it also took a collection of federal block grants and tax credits, including allocations to help lower-income agricultural workers in seafood and forestry. The funding was topped off by a $400,000 donation from the Columbia Pacific Coordinated Care Organization, which oversees the region’s Medicaid recipients and will have a certain amount of units set aside.

“I suspect we’ll mostly have workers in the seafood plants there,” Cornelius said of potential residents. “Oftentimes, they have difficulty finding housing nearby. And so our project is closer to those plants.”

Along with funding, affordable housing developments face challenges such as a not-in-my-backyard mentality from neighbors worried a project could hurt property values. But Ken Yuill, who owns the property in Chelsea Gardens, lives next door and would watch the apartments rise from his backyard. He said the project represents a long-term win for the community.

“If this goes, it’s going to benefit so many families,” he said. “And yes, I would have loved to have all this commercial. I would have loved to have created a whole bunch of jobs. But with the commission on their thoughts because of the traffic and everything, to me, this was a first step that was going to benefit the neighborhood.”

Political will

If it takes over Trillium House, the housing authority would control nearly 500 units of affordable housing in Clatsop, Tillamook and Columbia counties, said Todd Johnston, the executive director.

Trillium House, if approved by the city, could break ground in the spring and open in 2022. The project would be on a similar timeline as another $60 million, 240-unit complex being developed near St. Helens, where Johnston said workers face a similar lack of workforce housing.

Whether the Trillium House concept can be replicated in other areas of the North Coast depends on finding developers like Walsh Construction willing to take a lower return in exchange for community benefit. The company’s founders, Bob and Tom Walsh, have always been community minded people wanting to benefit others while still making money from their projects, Steffen said.

Expanding the model will also take the political will to create more land for higher-density development, he said.

“For all the need for affordable housing at the coast, it appeared that there are about six or eight sites that could take a significant amount of homes,” Steffen said. “It doesn’t bode well for the delivery of a lot of homes. There’s a lot of land out there, but not a lot of it is urban-zoned.”