Leadership in Lakewood: From Offices to Affordable Housing

摘要

Metro West Housing Solutions (MWHS) has been an affordable housing provider in the Lakewood, Colorado community since 1974. Lakewood is in dire need of more affordable housing. The average rent in the area has risen by at least 23.4 percent since 2014. Recently, MWHS transformed a vacant office building at 5800 W. Alameda Avenue into an affordable housing development. Although Fifty-Eight Hundred is near the popular Belmar downtown shopping and dining center, it had been unable to attract any retail or office tenants for decades. MWHS saw an opportunity to kickstart the redevelopment of the Alameda Corridor by creating housing in what some called "the ugliest building in Lakewood." Fifty-Eight Hundred is now a 152-unit apartment building. Unit sizes range from studios to three-bedroom family apartments. Households earning between 30 percent - 60 percent of the area median income are eligible for a unit. MWHS benefitted from forming strategic partnerships to support the Fifty-Eight Hundred development. For example, they partnered with Alameda Connects-a local nonprofit-and the Alameda Corridor Business Improvement District (BID) to participate in a larger effort to revitalize the community. The Alameda Corridor BID provided a public art sculpture and beautiful landscape in the public space near Fifty-Eight Hundred. MWHS also coordinated investors, architects, interior designers, contractors, funders, and community stakeholders to contribute expertise to the project.