Housing group continues mission of pioneering black developer

In 1869, Boston native George Putnam Riley, 13 other African-Americans and one white man formed the Workingmen's Joint Stock Association, pooling their funds to buy property.

They dispatched Riley to Washington Territory, where he acquired four blocks in what is now Beacon Hill and 67 acres in Tacoma -- land that became the Hilltop neighborhood and the basis for Tacoma's African-American community, according to Blackpast.org, a local Web site that chronicles African-American history.

	George Putnam Riley

"We're talking about very, very small towns (then), so he's really getting in on the ground floor," said Quintard Taylor, an American history professor at the University of Washington and the man behind Blackpast.org.

The association was known not only for its predominance of African-Americans, but also because it was interracial and included two women, Taylor noted.

Three years ago, another assemblage of African-Americans dedicated a new development effort in southeast Seattle to Riley, creating the George P. Riley Group.

The Riley Group came about as the economic development arm of the Breakfast Group, an organization of professional African-American men focusing on helping some of Seattle's most at-risk young men.

"Part of our mission was to see if we couldn't create more businesses in our communities," said Herman McKinney, 69, a Breakfast Group board member and chairman of its economic development committee.

They decided to focus on housing and expanded from an original dozen Breakfast Group members to 21, adding more professionals. Taylor joined because he saw the mission as historic.

The group was going to be named the Breakfast Group Development Corp. until Taylor told them about Riley.

"He's a guy who was attempting to do what we are now trying to do," he said.

The Riley Group's first dozen homes, in the Rainier Vista community, are not reserved for low-income buyers or African-Americans, but they do sell for less than most other new Seattle houses and are in a neighborhood where many low-income African-Americans live.

"We're creating jobs," McKinney said. "We're creating more opportunities for businesses and housing, which is critically important."

There's also significance to having a group of African-Americans building these homes, Taylor said. "It's about building a role model for African-Americans, particularly African-American men."

The group includes real estate professionals as well as people from other backgrounds, such as Taylor and NBA Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens. Mel Streeter, who launched Seattle's first African-American-owned architecture firm in 1967, was the group's original architect. Donald King, president and chief executive of the firm DKA, took over as project manager last year, after Streeter died.

The Seattle Housing Authority prefers to hire people from the communities it serves and use small, local contractors, Executive Director Tom Tierney said. "But we've not had a group like the Riley Group before, who could actually come together and do a significant amount of our housing and at the same time create the community and social benefit."

There may be a few unfortunate parallels between the historical Riley and the modern-day group.

Many who bought from the original Riley ended up losing their homes because of economic busts and foreclosure, Taylor said. "It's sort of like the subprime mortgage scandal now."

The subprime scandal has contributed to slowing sales nationally and led to tighter standards among lenders who give mortgages to people with poor credit.

"Housing sales are going much slower than we had planned," Taylor said.

It didn't help that the first homes hit the market five months later than the group had planned, putting their debut in September, after the market had started slowing and lenders had tightened credit.

Tierney said the delay might have hurt sales, but the developer met its obligations to the authority.

"There was, frankly, some concern at the very beginning that they wouldn't be able to meet milestones, and that, I think, there were people wondering whether this would actually end up in quality housing on the site," he said. "Our organization is tremendously impressed with what they've accomplished."

The group plans to erect more homes in Rainier Vista and then build elsewhere, McKinney said.

"There are so many people in our urban communities that are paying an enormous amount in rent. It just seems appropriate to be able to provide opportunities for them to purchase houses."

LEARN MORE

For more about the George P. Riley Group and its homes in Rainier Vista, go to RainierVista.SeattleDreamHomes.com. For more about Riley, search using his name at Blackpast.org.