Rising up over 23rd Avenue and Spring Street in the Central District is construction on Africatown Plaza, one of Seattle’s newest affordable housing developments.
Unlike many of the cookie cutter five-over-one boxes you see throughout the city, the building is unique. Wrapped in a curved facade of weathered steel, its rust-hued aesthetic echoes the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Its unconventional look is by design.
Everything about the building is due to community-centered, intentional design, and that includes the people who are building it.
A collaboration between Africatown Community Land Trust and Community Roots Housing, the 126-unit project — which is currently accepting rental applications — was able to secure a Black general contractor to help lead the construction. In addition to the general contractor, ACLT said about half of the building’s subcontractors were owned by people of color.
This is significant because Black contractors are underrepresented in the construction industry and beyond. According to Pew, only about 7% of construction businesses were Black-owned in the U.S., though African Americans are about 14% of the population. The numbers are even lower for general contractors, with one report finding less than 4% of general contractors were Black.
K. Wyking Garrett, the president and CEO of ACLT, said part of the vision of Africatown Plaza is to demonstrate what is possible with projects like these, so other entities could replicate and scale on their own projects.
“We hear a lot about equitable development,” Garrett said, “but a lot of these development projects don’t have equitable participation in the economic opportunities that are connected” to them.
“I think this raises the bar and sets a new standard for what is considered equitable development,” Garrett said.
Kevin Young, the owner of Africatown Plaza general contractor M.A.D. Construction, said he’s been proud of the work his company and subcontractors have done on the project, especially because often a barrier for contractors is other people not believing they have the ability to do the job.
“You always hear ‘well, I’m not sure they’ll be able to perform,’ ” Young said. But he said the proof is in the quality of the work.
“I think this project will come out on top and show that we can, as Black people, do it. We can be a bigger force in this construction business,” he said.
William Bradford, professor emeritus of finance at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, has studied Black entrepreneurship and economic mobility for years.
He said that while it is becoming more common, it’s still unusual to see Black general contractors for big projects like this.
“We’re not there by a longshot with regard to participating in contracting with government agencies to get business done,” Bradford said.
Bradford said having more Black contractors creates a virtuous cycle that helps to tackle the racial wealth gap.
He said the median family wealth of self-employed business owners is higher than that of workers, and Black business owners are likely to be more inclined to provide opportunities to Black workers and subcontractors.
“So there’s a secondary effect,” he said. “Black entrepreneurship leads to successful and higher income for that Black entrepreneur, but also to those who the entrepreneur hires.”
Getting a foot in the door is key, Bradford said.
“Once that success is there, then we’re going, then we’re rolling. We can hire Black people, they can become better off than what they were before,” Bradford said. “And some of them can leave to start their own businesses and do the same thing. And so it has a multiplying effect.”
As I have written before, the racial wealth gap is very real, including in Seattle, where in 2021, the median white household income was two times that of Black residents and the value of white-owned businesses was 12 times that of Black-owned businesses.
Those persistent wealth inequalities — which are driven by the stolen labor and loss of capital due to slavery, racial discrimination in employment, restrictive housing covenants and redlining — mean there is less money for Black entrepreneurs to work with when it comes to starting a business.
“It’s important that those who have endured past practices and policies that intentionally and systematically disenfranchised and prevented economic participation and mobility,” Garrett said, “that those same families are able to get some remedy in the form of being prioritized, for reparative interventions.”
Garrett said ACLT’s various projects in the Central District have changed the discussion around gentrification in Seattle.
“I think we’ve been able to demonstrate that we can have development without displacement. And we’ve been able to change the narrative about the future of Seattle. There was a time when the Black community was pretty much just completely condemned to the past,” Garrett said.
“And now, there’s not only more conversation about us being a part of the future, but I think we’ve been able to demonstrate some models and pathways to get there that at scale, our community can be a part of the future of Seattle.”