Working material for the board and invited collaborators.
A study Brighton commissioned in February 2025 models up to 104 more homes here, under the zoning that already applies and with a lot boundary adjustment. This document sets out how to confirm that, what it would cost, and the working session that starts it.
Four paragraphs: the argument, the ask, the money and the risk, and what is still open.
Brighton owns two studies of the same site, commissioned eight months apart.
A growth study of February 2025 models four growth scenarios at the core campus under the zoning that applies today, with a lot boundary adjustment and no rezone. Its largest reaches 104 more homes; by our own arithmetic about 90 of those sit on the contiguous campus and the other fourteen are the South Holly townhomes. A renovation study of October 2025 prices work at $11,928,243 and says on its opening page that it did not examine the potential of the site for redevelopment. Each was scoped to its own question and both are good work. We went looking for a document that puts the two together and could not find one.
Half a day, with the people who wrote both studies in the same room.
That session settles four things: whether renovating and growing can happen on the same parcel, where parking goes in each combination, what a tax credit transaction does to that parcel for the length of its compliance period, and which of the first four studies can start the following week. The session uses material Brighton has already paid for, and the study plan sets out what follows from it.
Three items the board should have in front of it when it decides.
The BECU note, $4.1M at 3.325%, matures in January 2028. The renovation figure is the study's own printed total of $11,928,243 rather than the $11.1M in circulation, which is the first two lines of that total. It is Fall 2025 construction cost and excludes escalation, fees and two investigations; carried to a later start our own rough figure lands nearer $16M, and that is our arithmetic rather than an estimator's. In the 2027 workbook the line labeled net operating income already nets out interest and depreciation, so it reads $75,900 where operating net operating income by our own arithmetic is nearer $858,900.
The organizing idea, and ten questions.
Phase one has read the documents. It has not yet settled which of four candidate ideas orders the others, and that choice changes what several sections of this site say. Ten questions are listed at the foot of this page, two of them about claims in Brighton's own material that we could not source and have therefore held back.
This section names the idea the rest of the document is organized around. Four candidates sit alongside each other, and phase one settles the ordering.
Now City Labs is a small real estate development team. We built our own tools to underwrite and pressure test our own deals, and we use them on other people's projects when the project and the people are a fit.
On this engagement the work is reading, arithmetic and sequencing: what the documents say, where they disagree, what a number would have to be for a decision to change, and what to do first. The money and the risk are stated plainly throughout, because those are what the board decides against.
So far phase one has read the sixteen documents Brighton shared, indexed them, reconciled eighteen places where two Brighton documents state different numbers, and read Seattle's adopted plans and funding programs as they stand in September 2026. The working sessions that settle the organizing idea are still ahead, and the team page names who is doing what.
Brighton Communities owns 149 homes across two buildings and holds 3.94 acres at 6727 Rainier Avenue South in one piece, described as a five acre campus in its own August report, with scattered parcels on South Holly. It has been doing this work in this neighborhood for twenty five years.
Four, each with a source, followed by what it makes possible.
The summary above sets out the two studies. What matters for the work is the detail: the growth study models four scenarios under current LR3 zoning with a lot boundary adjustment, and the renovation study's page 6 total of $11,928,243 is Fall 2025 construction cost with escalation, fees and two investigations sitting outside it.
What it opens. The inputs for the decision already exist and are already paid for, so the first piece of work is reconciliation rather than a new study. It is also the cheapest item in the study plan.
Homes entering permitting fell from 20,468 across 2020, the peak year, to 1,137 in 2026 to date. Mandatory Housing Affordability revenue, paid by market rate developers, fell from $22 million in 2025 to $3.8 million in 2026 to date. More than seventy permitted projects are waiting on construction financing, about 6,700 homes across the 35 that have been documented.
What it opens. Acquisition prices soften while construction pricing and financing stay hard, which is the order Brighton's own strategy prefers. A project that starts entitlement now delivers into 2028 and 2029, when fewer buildings will be completing.
The BECU note, $4.1M at 3.325%, matures in January 2028. It sits against $27.8M of net equity at roughly 23% loan to value, with $2.6M of reserves. The four page handout states 24% for the same ratio.
What it opens. A lender looking at the note looks at the whole portfolio, so one process, run once, can replace the note and size a facility that also funds acquisitions. That is about sixteen months out.
The Office of Housing's 2026 rental production round put $110M into projects restricted to 0 to 60 percent of area median income. It weights location toward places with limited prior City investment where residents face displacement risk, and gives priority to buildings where at least 20 percent of the homes have two or more bedrooms. Brighton Place's mix is 33 three bedroom, 24 two bedroom and 67 one bedroom.
What it opens. The published criteria describe this portfolio closely. A submission needs audited figures, a settled scope, and a capital stack stated one way.
Everything in this section is in place today and traceable to a document Brighton shared.
Brighton Place at 6727 Rainier holds 124 homes, built in 1967-68 on a cruciform plan, three stories over a daylight basement. The Arches adds 25, bought in 2022.
Environmental Works and Ecotope record 123 homes at Brighton Place. We use 124 because the bedroom mix sums to it.
171,627 square feet, zoned LR3 at 1.8 floor area ratio with a forty foot height limit, against an existing building of 160,561 square feet. Parking is required at half a space per home because the site is on a frequent transit corridor.
The June 2024 site report states 171,757 square feet for its joint venture case, and Buy Build Own describes a five acre campus against the growth study's 3.94. We use the growth study's figures and note the others.
In its largest of four scenarios, the February 2025 sheet models 104 additional homes under today's zoning with a lot boundary adjustment, for a site total of 228. By our own arithmetic about 90 of those sit on the contiguous campus; the remaining fourteen are the South Holly townhomes.
Windows were replaced in 2014. Rooftop solar was funded by a $400,000 Washington State Housing Finance Commission loan at 1.5 percent. A structural engineer was brought in during the Arches feasibility work and confirmed that building sound.
The August 2026 neighborhood economics roundtable with Representative Adam Smith drew Marination, Alpha Sharp Development Partners, Urban Family, the Filipino Community Center and the Rainier Valley Community Development Fund, alongside Brighton.
An attendee list, not a set of commitments. Alpha Sharp Development Partners is separately named in Brighton's own documents as the development partner on the South Holly townhome program. None of the organizations named here has been approached about the working sessions described on this site.
More than $400,000 was raised from the community in a couple of weeks toward the Arches purchase. The material records this as money actually raised, which is a different kind of evidence from the rest of the distributed ownership case.
Named documents and dates, as they stand in September 2026. Engaging the City's own adopted material by name is the part of this document a funder or a council office will check first.
| Document or program | Where it stands | What it means here |
|---|---|---|
| One Seattle Comprehensive Plan | Adopted December 16, 2025. Effective January 21, 2026. | The twenty year growth framework this site sits inside. Implementation was split into phases, and the phasing is where the consequences are. |
| Phase 1 zoning, middle housing | Passed December 2025. | Neighborhood Residential zones citywide now allow townhomes, duplexes, cottage housing and stacked flats. This is the state middle housing requirement landing in Seattle code, and it bears on the South Holly townhome program. |
| Phase 2 zoning, Centers and Corridors | Final proposal released January 29, 2026. Rescheduled into 2027 on June 25, 2026, citing litigation. OPCD has trimmed the corridor upzones from earlier drafts. | Any outcome that depends on a corridor or neighborhood center upzone at Rainier and South Brighton is a 2027 question at the earliest. The 104 home scenario runs under current zoning, so it is not exposed to the 2027 schedule. |
| Rental Housing Production NOFA | $110M published July 20, 2026. Closes noon on September 17, 2026. All homes restricted to 0 to 60 percent of area median income. | Its rehabilitation category describes the Brighton Place scope closely and names low income housing tax credits. A preservation and debt restructuring round is expected by the end of 2026, and that one lines up with the BECU maturity. |
| Multifamily Tax Exemption, Program 7 | Effective November 14, 2025, sunsetting September 1, 2029. | Raised income and rent limits, changed how alternate bedrooms count, and increased the share of homes that must have two or more bedrooms to meet its 20 percent set aside. |
| Equitable Development Initiative | 2026 round: up to $75,000 for capacity building, with uncapped capital funding, intending to fund three or four shovel ready capital projects. | Rainier Valley recipients have included the Rainier Beach Action Coalition's Food Innovation Center. |
| Rainier Valley Affordable Homeownership Initiative | Final site awarded August 26, 2026, bringing it to 127 permanently affordable ownership homes. | The closest institutional analogue to the South Holly hybrid ownership model. It is fully awarded, so the opportunity is to learn from how it was structured. |
| Proposition 1A, social housing | Passed February 2025. A 5 percent payroll tax on compensation above $1,000,000 per employee, forecast at $50M a year citywide. Collections began January 2026 and $115 million was reported raised this spring. | A new revenue stream at city scale. The forecast is citywide rather than allocated to any neighborhood, which matters for one of the open questions below. |
| Rainier Valley Community Development Fund | A $50 million transit oriented development fund established by the Sound Transit Board in 1999 and stood up in 2002, half mitigation and half revolving loan fund. More than $100 million invested locally since. | A different fund from Proposition 1A. Bob Luciano of the fund is on the attendee list for Brighton's August 2026 roundtable, which is a list of attendees rather than a set of commitments. |
Seattle's plan sits inside a county framework and a state statute. This section records which of those documents we have read and which we have not.
Each of these waits on the organizing idea, or on the reconciliation of the two studies, or on both.
Conditions on the ground, with what a coordinated approach does about each one. Stated as conditions, never as another party's shortcoming.
Waits on: the organizing idea, and the reconciliation.
One paragraph a board member can repeat accurately from memory: what is proposed, how many homes, on which parcels, over what period, and what it costs.
Phase one produced a range for what the ownership group could hold over time from a base of 149 homes. That range is our own arithmetic, spans 171 homes end to end, and includes parcels that are unquantified and acquisitions that are contingent, so it is an order of magnitude rather than a proposal and it is not printed here as one.
The physical components: homes, ground floors, open space, parking, energy, and the connections between parcels, each with the parcel it sits on and the code pathway it uses.
One code fact to design against: ground floor use in this zone is limited to social services and institutions, with no retail. Any active ground floor on the Rainier frontage has to answer that, either within the use table or through the Centers and Corridors work now scheduled for 2027.
Phasing, and the use of every parcel during every phase.
A rule for this section when it is written: every parcel has a named use in every phase, interim uses included. No phase closes with land sitting empty.
Three or four numbers, chosen so the claim can be proved or disproved, and aligned to measures the City already publishes wherever the two overlap.
Ten questions. Each one changes something on this site depending on the answer, and we would rather ask than assume.
The study plan sets out the work in order, and the ask is one convening.