Officials approve $670M master-planned community in Seattle suburb

Dive Brief:

The Seattle suburb of Covington, WA, has given the green light to developers of a 214-acre, $670 million master-planned, mixed-use project that will include 1,500 homes, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.
The focal point of the KTGY-designed LakePointe Urban Village will be a 20-acre lake with a peninsula, which will include for-sale and for-rent residences, retail, dining and a park. The community will also include a hotel and an 850,000-square-foot "entertainment and lifestyle center," according to Builder.
Developers Oakpointe Communities and Presidio Residential Capital plan to break ground on the complex early next year.

Dive Insight:

The Seattle area is in serious development mode, as evidenced by the 62 tower cranes in operation — the most of any U.S. city — as of November 2016. At that time, 23 cranes were for residential projects, the second-highest behind Chicago.

Much of this activity has been driven by tech companies — especially Amazon — and their expansions in Seattle. By 2019, Amazon alone will have enough office space in the city for 70,000 employees. Many of those workers will choose to live in the work-live-play neighborhoods that have been created downtown, but some will likely choose a more "suburban urban" location like LakePointe Urban Village.

Seattle development has also resulted in an impressive investment in mass transportation. The $3.7 billion East Link Extension will connect Seattle and Bellevue, WA, across Lake Washington, which is part of a $54 billion master plan that will connect the greater Seattle area with 62 miles of light rail and rapid-bus service. In fact, the East Link Extension, which will also connect the city to the Microsoft stronghold of Redmond, WA, will be the first light-rail system in the world to be built on a floating bridge.

Of course, the suburbs are not the only place developers are building mixed-use projects. The Molasky Group and Chinese investor Binjiang Group are pushing ahead with a 41-story, mixed-use residential tower in downtown Seattle that was nearly scuttled because of its developer's role in an EB-5 fraud case. Aside from the 339 apartments, the building will also include a 142-room hotel and ground-floor retail.