South Side O' The Tracks - The Borning Building - Cornerstone II

Isn't she a beaut?  A tipster alerted us the other day that another residential project was slated for the south side of the tracks.  What we expected to hear:  "Defunct warehouse being converted into luxury lofts.  1000 sqf units starting in the low $300s."  What we heard:  "Defunct warehouse being converted into 50 loft units for low income families."  Pardon?  Loft units?  Low income?

The Cornerstone II project will be a renovation of the former Borning Building located at 151 South Adams (see pic above).  The $10,000,000 project is being driven by Northeast Washington Housing Solutions (NEWHS) who provide housing assistance to roughly 4,000 low income families in Eastern WA.

After yesterday's posting on families downtown this is a timely development that could swing the pendulum more towards the middle.  Not only that, but it's going to certainly provide additional people/activity/spending power to an area that sorely needs it, and at 50 units it just may be downtown's largest condo conversions to date.  Nicely done NEWHS.

Comments

[Meghan]

I think this is amazing news. Well I am a supporter of downtown residential development at all income levels, I think we specifically need more efforts like this to balance out some of the higher end stuff coming to town. Downtown needs to be diverse in every sense of the word-- economically, ethnically, politcally, creatively. I'll watch this develop with great interest.

[Heyduke]

I agree this is great news. This project makes me more excited about residential development downtown. Anyone know what qualifies as "low income"? Keep us posted on this one!

[METROSPOKANE]

Yeah, it's pretty cool to see a project like this take place. It's a big step towards making a more robust downtown.