This big Bellingham residential facility is ready. Will it ease the tight rental market?
A new downtown apartment building is expected to meet some of the pent-up demand in Bellingham’s tight housing market.
Construction of Stateside was recently completed and residents, chiefly Western Washington University students, have moved in for the new school year. The building is a few blocks south of the Herald Building and has 513 beds in a modern student housing layout. While there are one- and two-bedroom options, it also offers unit floor plans of up to six bedrooms for those who want a more social, dorm hall-style setting.
The completion of Stateside marks the third major off-campus residential building geared toward college students built in the past five years. Elevate Bellingham on Forest Street and Lark Bellingham on Lincoln Street have a combined total of nearly 1,100 beds. WWU also recently completed a new residential dorm called the Alma Clark Glass Hall on campus to replace Highland Hall, gaining an extra 264 beds.
Whether this influx of housing geared toward students will put a dent in the low vacancy rate for rentals remains to be seen. Last spring the Washington Center for Real Estate Research surveyed vacant apartment units in Whatcom County. According to the survey, the vacancy rate was less than 1%. A balanced rental market tends to have a vacancy rate of around 5%.
The two mixed-use, six-story buildings that makeup Stateside are already a popular choice for WWU students, with 90% of the beds occupied, said Gabriel Grant, principal of Spectrum Development Solutions, the company that developed Stateside.
The inside of the buildings have quite a few features geared toward student life, including plenty of spaces for studying, a communal kitchen for group meals and cooking classes, a 24-hour gym and high-efficiency washers and dryers in the laundry room. There’s also a rooftop deck that has a barbecue area with sweeping views not only of Bellingham Bay but a good view of Western’s campus up the hill.
Grant said they also focused on a few other things in order to provide benefits for the residents, but also the neighborhood:
▪ The building is built to meet LEED Gold environmental standards as well as being a Fitwel certified building. Fitwel focuses on the health of the occupants. Among the areas Fitwel looks at for certification are air ventilation and natural lighting.
Construction of the building started in 2019 before the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, so along with the Fitwel guidelines the company took additional measures, including using more touchless appliances, said Jhomar Small, an associate principal with Spectrum.
▪ Stateside has an open area between the two buildings to connect pedestrians and cyclists with North State Street and the nearby South Bay Trail, which could create better pedestrian traffic flow in the area.
▪ The company has also made connections with WWU. The university has space on the ground floor of the building that not only connects with the students but also with the surrounding business community said Eric Alexander, Western’s executive director of student engagement.
Along with using the space for meetings or community events, WWU’s space at Stateside will host a few classes for the entrepreneurship program, which is led by director Art Sherwood and lead instructor Meg Weber.
▪ To address traffic congestion, the company worked with the city on a different approach to handling cars. The building only has about 100 parking spaces but nearly 400 indoor bike spaces, including a bike repair and wash area. If students do want to have a car, they need to work with Stateside to figure out onsite or offsite parking.
There’s also a car share program with an electric vehicle to further encourage students to not bring a car. The street parking around the building also have meters in place to discourage the residents from leaving cars on the street.
Grant said there is a clear trend in trying to decrease the reliance on cars in urban areas, which played a big role in their planning.
This approach to handling parking does raise concerns among some in the neighborhood. Greg Keeler, who operates the Oyster Creek Canvas Co. across the street from Stateside, said the “if we don’t build parking spaces, students won’t get cars” mentality hasn’t been working yet, noting that parking is a mess early on and that it is affecting nearby businesses like his.
Keeler was also disappointed that the alley district, which he said is part of the soul of Bellingham, has changed. Before Stateside was built, the area was home to a variety of small businesses and artists, as well as the Hub Community Bike Shop, which is now on Ohio Street near Bellingham High School.
“I know I sound like a grumpy old man, but that project doesn’t really help our city in any shape or form,” Keeler said in an email.
In addressing the alley district, Grant said they did work to preserve some of that past, taking some of the murals done by Yale Wolf that were originally on the property and putting them on the building facing the South Bay Trail. They also commissioned a new piece by Wolf as well as commissioned other art in the area, including one done by local sculptor Aaron Loveitt.
While a number of businesses were forced to relocate when construction of Stateside started in 2019, a number of businesses either have opened or are making plans to open in that part of North State Street. In the Stateside building, Otherside Bagels is expected to open this fall. Other businesses moving into the area include a new brewery called Darach Brewing and a taphouse called Time & Materials.
This story was originally published September 27, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
