UW Mount Baker Laundry

The site is in Seattle’s Rainier Valley next to the Mount Baker light rail station at 2901 27^th Ave South. The site is owned by the City of Seattle and includes a parking lot, a concrete slab, and one vacant building. The site has been used for a few different purposes over the past century. A home built around 1916 was removed by the mid-1900s. A bowling alley operated here from the 1950s to the early 1980s, and the University of Washington later used the building as a large laundry facility until 2009. Another building on the property previously housed several grocery and retail businesses before being demolished in 2025 to prepare for redevelopment.

This site cleanup is made possible in part by funding from Ecology’s Affordable Housing Cleanup Grants. Washington is in dire need of affordable housing across the state. Contamination, or even the suspicion of contamination, drives up the costs of housing development. The large cost leaves little incentive for developers to build affordable housing.

In addition to the usual risks of redevelopment, cleaning up contaminated sites can be a complex process with considerable risk. The cost and time associated with cleaning up a site is often poorly understood; as a result, many sites are left vacant or underused for years, even decades. Supporting cleanups for affordable housing helps make sure the cleanup gets done, protecting the community’s health and the environment. Ecology developed the Affordable Housing Cleanup Grant Program (AHCGP) to help advance environmental cleanups for affordable housing developments. These grants can cover remedial action costs, including planning, investigative, and technical work needed to clean up contaminated sites. The purpose of the AHCGP is to expedite the cleanup and redevelopment of contaminated sites into affordable housing use and lessen the impact of cleanup costs.

El Centro de la Raza and Mercy Housing Northwest have partnered to redevelop the property into a community‑focused project. El Centro and Mercy Housing are both Washington-based organizations with long histories of providing affordable housing and community services. Together, they plan to build a mixed‑use affordable family housing development that will also include community space and the University of Washington’s Rainier Valley Early Learning Campus. The project received an affordable housing cleanup grant from Ecology to support cleanup before redevelopment into affordable housing, and El Centro and Mercy Housing plan to lease this property from the city and then clean it up. The first phase of construction is expected to begin in 2026. Cleanup and redevelopment will happen at the same time. For more information about the redevelopment project, please visit: https://www.elcentrodelaraza.org/mtbaker.

The Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA) is Washington’s environmental cleanup law. It provides requirements for contaminated site cleanup and sets standards that protect human health and the environment. Ecology enacts MTCA and oversees cleanups. The MTCA site cleanup process is completed in steps (see graphic below) over a variable timeline.