Brighton Communities and Now City Labs

The place

What it would be like to live here, walk here and work here. Every sentence on this page has to come from this campus and this block of Rainier Avenue South, so most of it is written in phase two.

Working document · September 2026

Physical form

Buildings, heights and the shape of the campus

What gets built, how tall, and how it sits against the existing cruciform building.

The constraints are already known. Forty foot height limit, 1.8 floor area ratio, an existing building of 160,561 square feet on 171,627 square feet of land, which the June 2024 report states as 171,757 for its joint venture case, and parking at half a space per home. The growth study's largest scenario reaches 228 homes inside those limits.

Ground floors

What happens at street level

The Rainier frontage, the entry gate, and the corner at South Holly.

A code fact that shapes this section. Ground floor use in this zone is limited to social services and institutions, with no retail. Two campus sub-parcels are already in conversation for other uses, one for daycare, social services and housing with a community partner, and one for workforce housing. Those conversations are the starting material for this page.

Public realm

Open space, the courtyard and getting around

Including the courtyard the two South Holly parcels are planned to share.

Homes

Who the homes are for

Tenure, bedroom mix, income bands, and how a resident moves between them.

What is already fixed. Brighton Place's existing mix is 33 three bedroom, 24 two bedroom and 67 one bedroom homes, which matches the two bedroom priority in the City's funding criteria. The South Holly ownership model carries a $175,000 deferred second per home. Brighton's own documents target 70 to 80 percent of area median income in one place and 80 to 120 percent in another, and that is one of the open questions.