Time for a new I.D.?

And it is feats like Moriguchi's latest -- Uwajimaya Village, a project he worked on with longtime Seattle developer Bruce Lorig -- that make it clear why.

Moriguchi and Lorig together brought something to the International District that the community has traditionally lacked: brand-new, market-rate apartments.


	A cat's-eye view at Uwajimaya Village. Phil H. Webber / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Click for larger photo

But whether Uwajimaya is the first of many such developments in the International District or an anomaly in a neighborhood destined to be a mostly commercial district with some subsidized housing is something on which real estate developers and consultants seem to disagree.

"I've always felt that it was important to have a variety of housing, including market-rate housing, here," Moriguchi said last week, seated on a bench in the Uwajimaya Village courtyard. "Deep down, I've always known that having only subsidized housing is not healthy for a neighborhood."

Though the list is short, a few other market-rate housing projects have opened or are under construction in the International District.

Pacific Condominiums, a 50-unit project that sits on top of Pacific Rim Center on South Jackson Street, near Interstate 5, is 90 percent complete. Four of the building's 50 condominiums -- priced between $175,000 and $469,000 -- have been sold, according to Mei-Jui Lin, who is marketing the project with HMI Real Estate.

Just east of Uwajimaya, The Fortune Group broke ground on a 75-unit apartment project that will be 60 percent market-rate housing, said Mark Raabe, the company's president. The project will take about a year to complete.

And in 1999, the Moriguchi family introduced Fujisada, a 25-unit condominium building on Sixth Avenue South. The one- and two-bedroom units started at about $130,000 and topped out at more than $300,000.

Moriguchi said the project taught him two valuable lessons.

"It taught me that there is a demand in the International District for market-rate housing," he said. "And it taught me that I needed a specialist -- that it's a lot easier to sell rice than apartments."

So this time around, Moriguchi left the residential development to Lorig while he and his family worked on creating the new 60,000-square-foot Uwajimaya store.

The completion of the project earlier this year represents the culmination of more than a decade of work. Moriguchi acquired the first of the two blocks on which the Uwajimaya store, apartments and parking lot are built 15 years ago. Construction began at the end of 1998 and the tenants began moving into their homes in January.

So far a little fewer than half the Uwajimaya apartments have been rented, Lorig said. Rents start at $885 a month for a studio and top out at $2,500 for a large two-bedroom unit.

"It's leasing up slowly, probably because rents are a little high for the location," said Brian O'Connor of the O'Connor Consulting Group, noting that the rents were more what one might expect to find in Belltown. "It's a beautiful project, I loved it. It's a little ahead of its time, perhaps."

O'Connor, who called Lorig and Moriguchi "pioneers," said he thinks the International District could become Seattle's next hot neighborhood.

"They'll do well in the long term," O'Connor said. "I think the project will attract urban folks, the same kind of people that liked Belltown in the early years, when it still had its edge. Belltown lost that edge and became too mainstream. I think that the next place with that edge is going to be the I.D."

But just two weeks into construction on his new International District project, Raabe disagrees.

"You won't find many people like Mr. Moriguchi who are willing to develop their land," he said. "It's too hard and it's too risky. Also, a lot of the buildings are historic and you couldn't tear them down if you wanted to."

Still, Raabe believes that the International District has potential.

"There's a real lack of bread and butter apartments that are affordable to working people," he said, pointing out that much of the new development in Seattle is aimed at high-end renters.

"Even though the International District has not been considered a prime residential location, when you look at it on a map, and you look at what's around it, it should be a prime residential location."

While Moriguchi said he thought that there's a lot of opportunity to develop the International District, he also said he hopes that builders proceed with caution.

"Development is going to happen because it's so close-in," he said.

"The challenge will be to stay focused on the long range and not go for the quick bucks. Only 100 years from now will we be able to say whether the development turned out right or wrong."

P-I reporter Marni Leff can be reached at 206-448-8142 or marnileff@seattlepi.com

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