The Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDpda) received $500,000 in grants from the Seattle Foundation, the organizations announced June 12.
The money will support two projects: development of a future housing project at 615 8th Ave S, on a site SCIDpda acquired in March this year, and cultural activities coinciding with 2026 FIFA World Cup games this summer.
As with other SCIDpda projects, the housing project will consist of family housing priced below market-rate, and a ground floor space that can be rented to a community-based organization or a retailer. But for the first time, SCIDpda will also explore community ownership opportunities for the ground floor, so that a business can buy their space, like a condominium.
Jared Jonson, co-executive director of SCIDpda, said the project on 8th and Lane will continue SCIDpda’s “commitment to community development and working to preserve CID properties in the hands of community forever.”
Before closing on the property in March, SCIDpda was in discussions with the MacDougall-Thomas family estate, the building owner, for just under two years. The family was previously poised to sell to market-rate developer Seattle Development Partners LLC, which submitted a pre-application for demolition and construction, but the plans fell through, according to Jonson. The family pivoted to selling to a property owner who can put it to community use.
“They were very keen on the property going to a use that really supported the neighborhood’s goals and aspirations, and we can’t thank them enough for working with us,” said Jonson.
The family estate also owned an adjacent property at 7th and S Lane Street that once housed City Produce and which will be developed into a medical facility and affordable housing by ICHS and the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI).
The one-story property was sold to SCIDpda for $6.5 million with a long-term seller-financed deal, Jonson said. Initially, SCIDpda committed $500,000 of its own funding, and some of the additional $500,000 dollars from the Seattle Foundation. SCIDpda now has about eight years to come up with the remaining balance, which Jonson expects will come from a combination of public dollars, private investment, and likely more of SCIDpda’s own money.
The funding resulted from the Seattle Foundation approaching SCIDpda, wanting to deploy money into the community to bring benefits around the World Cup. As well as the pre-development on the site, the funding supported street activations by SCIDpda and partners during FIFA. During the Wing Luke Museum’s JamFest and CID Block Party, a variety of artists and organizers worked with SCIDpda to program activities in the alley. These include artist Scott Oshima, CID Arts Groups, CAM Mobile Book Fair & Library, local mahjong groups, artists Vivian Lin and Eli Roberts, and DJ Teck Savvy.
Ken Takahashi, Director of Social Impact Investing with the Seattle Foundation, had worked with SCIDpda when he was working at the Seattle Office of Economic Development. Over the years, he often heard concern from the neighborhood that when large games and events came to the area, the neighborhood didn’t necessarily benefit directly.
“It was more of an exercise in sort of mitigating negative impacts, and with the World Cup, just wanting to help the neighborhood in their efforts to benefit more directly from all of the kind of positive energy and positive sort of foot traffic and all the things from the World Cup,” Takahashi said.
But the Foundation also wanted to support longer-term goals from SCIDpda, and the property development seemed like a good choice. “A common challenge that nonprofits have when they acquire sites is that it takes them a few years before they can get development going on a site, and the holding cost for having that property can be an obstacle to getting things going soon,” Takahashi said. “We felt like if we could help them with lowering the cost of acquisition, it could help them participate more fully in activation events as the World Cup was happening, as well as taking some pressure off of their ability to get pre-development started on that site. So that was kind of a big reason why we picked SCIDpda.”
The Foundation board made its decision to approve the funding relatively close to the start of the World Cup.
Jonson views the project as building on the International District Village Square. The International Village Square 1 is located where the ICHS clinic is, as well as Legacy House, and the second is the Domingo Viernes Apartments, as well as the community center, library, restaurants and offices. “We view this as a continuation of that vision for Village Square, and wanting to kind of create, and I think give some love to a corner of the neighborhood that has been quiet over the years,” said Jonson.
It’s also an effort to revitalize a part of the neighborhood where seniors and children live and come to for appointments, but which has experienced public safety issues including persistent shootings, and disturbances like street racing at night.
SCIDpda aims to build between 70 and 100 units in the new building, half of them at least two-bedroom or more and up to four, to support family living. It is primarily meant for households earning between 30% and 50% of Area Median Income (AMI).
On the lower end of this range, a one-person household with an income of 30% AMI makes a gross of $34,550 per year, or $39,450 combined income for a household of two, and $44,400 for a three-person household, according to May 2026 figures from the Seattle Housing Authority. On the higher end, a one-person household making 50% of AMI corresponds to a gross income of $57,550 per year, $65,800 for a household of two, and $74,000 for a household of three.
Jonson believes this mix helps correct a general oversupply in new low-income housing priced at the 60% AMI and higher ranges. “Our housing product, I think, really reflects the population that we serve here in the CID,” Jonson said. “We’re building multi-generational housing for families who are newly arrived here or want to be here in the CID, we’re building housing for seniors who are on fixed incomes, typically on social security and not much else in the way of incomes.”
That said, SCIDpda will continue to conduct housing surveys on their tenants and elsewhere in the CID. “We take a lot of information from those surveys and apply them to the plans for our projects.”
The ground floor of the new project will have opportunities for service providers and retail. SCIDpda is also exploring the possibility of community ownership of the businesses and retail spaces.
On the west side of the project facing the alley, SCIDpda continues to restore Canton Alley and extend the restored alley south, extending to the Eng Family Homestead. It also faces the Donnie Chin International Children’s Park. “I think we have a really unique opportunity here between all three of those elements to create a new space for the community, for elders and families to gather, restore Canton Alley, and then hopefully encourage better utilization of the park, and I think it also gives us an opportunity to support whatever the Wing Luke’s programming looks like at the Homestead in the future,” said Jonson.
The space currently contains a Jiu Jitsu studio, an IT company, and it will be the temporary home of Dong Hing Wholesale Market, which is moving from its original location on 10th and Jackson, which will be demolished to build the Little Saigon Landmark Project. The owners will move into the 8th and Lane site for a few years before demolition, while they plan for their retirement.
While Dong Hing will not be a long-term tenant, a future business may be able to set down deeper roots, with an opportunity to buy the space in the manner of a condo, or explore a co-op model where a business can buy a share, and if they decide to close or move, can receive some monetary benefit.
“I do think exploring the potential for business community ownership, that’s going to be something new for us,” said Jonson. “We’re going to explore it here as well as at the Eclipse Hotel, offering ways for legacy businesses to own their spaces, for new business owners that are really oriented towards the CID, for them to own their spaces.”
Many legacy businesses are planning for succession and how to stay alive, Jonson noted. “Those conversations would be really different if some of these businesses had the opportunity to own their spaces. And that’s just not typically, I think, done in commercial real estate, and so we’re excited to explore that opportunity.”
The Seattle Foundation funding will help pay for architectural and feasibility studies which will help “evaluate development options, establish a preliminary unit mix, and determine the site’s overall development potential,” according to the press release. “These findings will help inform future financing strategies and public funding applications needed to advance the project toward construction.”
The Seattle Foundation hopes to invest in more projects like this in the CID, according to Takahashi. “This particular investment is fairly modest, but it’s a good preview of a direction that we’re trying to take to help out Chinatown-ID,” he said.
The 8th and Lane project comes at the tail end of several real estate projects from SCIDpda. SCIDpda plans to break ground on the Little Saigon Landmark Project in the fall. They are working on renovating the Eclipse Hotel, and the Spic N Span site, and phase two of the Beacon Pacific Village. The 8th and Lane project will come after these are finished. Jonson estimated they might break ground around 2032.
