There are almost as many ways to describe the El Rey as there are years under its (metaphorical) belt. One can outline its year of establishment (1910), construction material (brick), number of stories (4), square footage (30,000), and crossroads (between Lenora and Blanchard Streets along 2nd Avenu e in Belltown). Another method is to list the El Rey’s many functions over the years: At the start of the 20th century, it was a four-story apartment building with three ground-floor retail spaces;; by the end, it was a 60-unit mental health residential facility.Or finally, you could describe the El Rey through the existential crossroads it sits on: It might become artist-focused affordable housing, or alternatively, in just a few days, it’ll become a pile of bricks. by Adam Willems There are almost as many ways to describe the El Rey as there are years under its (metaphorical) belt. One can outline its year of establishment (1910), construction material (brick), number of stories (4), square footage (30,000), and crossroads (between Lenora and Blanchard Streets along 2nd Avenue in Belltown). Another method is to list the El Rey’s many functions over the years: At the start of the 20th century, it was a four-story apartment building with three ground-floor retail spaces; by the end, it was a 60-unit mental health residential facility. Or finally, you could describe the El Rey through the existential crossroads it sits on: It might become artist-focused affordable housing, or alternatively, in just a few days, it’ll become a pile of bricks.  The main group pushing to save the building is Common Area Maintenance (CAM), an arts collective, studio, and gallery in Belltown. Currently renting two properties, including one owned by mogul Martin Selig, CAM began working with a real estate agent last year in the hopes of establishing a more permanent footprint in the city.  “For the past 10 years I've been working at Common Area, one of the key conversations I have is, How do we survive in the city?” says Timothy Firth, a sculptor who co-founded CAM a decade ago and serves as its director. “That conversation has become more and more potent as the years go on.” The Belltown arts collective has spent the last decade carving out a home in the city’s shifting landscape, but now, CAM is reckoning with a question as pressing as ever: Can artists hold their ground in Seattle, or will the city’s creative core be priced out of existence? CAM’s efforts to find firmer footing kicked into high gear in December 2024 after local construction company BNBuilders reached out to Critical Ventures Housing Partnership II, which owns CAM’s 2nd Ave property, to conduct staging work on the building’s roof. BNBuilders intended to use the roof as a platform to demolish the property next door: the El Rey.  CAM’s 2nd Ave landlords, along with Firth, “got into a broader conversation about the structural stability of the roof and what we had to do to shore it up,” Firth says. They considered fighting the demolition, as the two buildings were built at the same time and have been “sinking down into the earth together for the past 100 years,” he explained. The idea of demolishing the El Rey raised a litany of questions. Could CAM’s 2nd Ave building structurally survive the demolition of its neighbor? How soon would demolition happen? And, if it went through, what would become of the lot where the El Rey once stood? The path to demolition As the cost of living has risen in Seattle, so too has the frequency and intensity with which politicians, renters, landowners, and others have debated what to do about local housing, especially the shortage thereof. Climbing rents and property asking prices have led to especial cost burdens for people of color, and have encouraged people excluded from top earning brackets—including creative workers—to move somewhere more affordable. Among other consequences, this kind of displacement and gentrification can raze and homogenize a city’s culture and identity, blurring the lines between its civic essence and the office parks and lanyard-festooned fashions of its most affluent ilk. While the Harrell Administration has touted “downtown activations” as one way to address Seattle’s multifaceted hollowing out, residents have responded to these realities with votes in favor of social housing—twice—as well as a slate of progressive tax policies. In aggregate, electoral outcomes suggest a public mandate to render Seattle more dynamic, diverse, and affordable by taxing wealthy people and corporations, expanding equity-attuned government initiatives, and funding middle-income housing. The El Rey is just the latest spot to draw public attention to the region’s structural shortcomings. And, over the years, it’s been home to much more than demolition-focused debates. In September 2019, SOUND Behavioral Health, a regional non-profit, acquired the El Rey following its merger with Community Psychiatric Clinic (CPC). This expanded SOUND’s network to 18 locations, serving 26,000 people. At the time of the merger, the El Rey functioned as a residential facility for 60 people, representing 13% of King County’s contracted mental health treatment beds. By August 2020, SOUND had shuttered the El Rey, citing “deferred maintenance,” including a sewage leak and plumbing problems. The organization estimated that bringing the building “up to where it needed to be” would cost several million dollars. SOUND’s tax filings show a drop in revenue from $99.5 million to $79.4 million between 2019 and 2020, while executive compensation climbed from $1.4 million to $2.4 million. (In 2023, it hovered around $1.6 million, following nearly $3 million in 2022.) Public reimbursements for care have remained relatively stagnant while property operating costs have increased. An October 2020 article by The Seattle Times suggested that after SOUND shut down the El Rey and relocated residents, at least one former El Rey resident became homeless. According to Nona Raybern, a spokesperson for the Seattle Office of Housing (SOH), the El Rey’s operational and services costs were “funded by local and federal homelessness dollars and the behavioral health system, including Medicaid” prior to 2020, and “ended after the project was no longer financially or operationally viable.” The building is now monitored by the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections (SDCI) under its Vacant Building Monitoring program. “The building as it currently stands does not meet the health and safety standards required for human habitation,” Raybern told The Stranger via email.  “We want to find a way that [the El Rey] strengthens our presence in Belltown because we think there’s a pretty big need for our services in Belltown, especially with the homeless population,” Paul Eisenhauer, SOUND’s former Chief Financial Officer, told The Seattle Times in 2020 at the time of the El Rey’s closing. “We’re hoping to find a way to do that. I just don’t know what it is at this point.”  SOUND’s calculus and priorities have shifted since then. Damage to its fire panel, electrical systems, and plumbing led to the building’s water and electricity being cut. The city then ordered SOUND to put the building on fire watch: round-the-clock, in-person supervision.  “Due to the extent of deterioration, restoring the El Rey would require significant capital investment to make it habitable even as an emergency shelter. After assessing the building with King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), it was deemed unsuitable for such purposes,” Raybern explains. “In its current state, maintaining the vacant property costs approximately $45,000 monthly due to necessary fire watch and insurance coverage expenses,” SOUND Chief Operation Officer Guy Delisi told The Stranger in an emailed statement. “Demolishing the building would significantly reduce costs while allowing for a future use that aligns with the property's current covenant.” If permitting comes through, SOUND and BNBuilders could begin tearing down the El Rey as early as April.  Transferring ownership & CAM’s vision SOUND “owns” the El Rey insofar as it possesses a favorable loan on the property from SOH. Attached to the loan is a property charter stipulating 60 affordable-housing units for residents earning up to 30% of the area median income, prioritizing intake from local shelters.  In conversations with SOUND COO Delisi, Firth learned that SOUND would be open to transferring ownership of the El Rey (and its loan of around $2 million) rather than knocking it down. Ongoing fire watch costs in addition to the uncertainties of redevelopment after demolition—in part due to current interest rates and the rising cost of construction materials caused by recent tariffs—may help a transfer pencil out from SOUND’s perspective.  With rising costs of living in Seattle in addition to stagnant wages for creative workers, CAM believes that providing affordable housing is a step toward addressing this systemic issue. As a community-arts organization, CAM intends to reconvert the El Rey to create 10 affordable housing units for artists at 80% area median income. A repurposed El Rey would also include a floor dedicated to short-term residency spaces, addressing the need for community organizations to cover lodging costs for visiting artists, mentors, and other guests, which often strains their budgets. “There's no other place in Seattle that offers affordable flex residency space for any other organization everywhere,” Firth says. “What a radical idea, we thought, to take one of these floors and have it be a resource for all these other … organizations that bring in artists and performers from other cities, or that even have in-city residential programs, and give them really affordable, beautiful, flex residency space.” Offices for local orgs and retail space would take up the bottom two floors, including a mixed-use performance venue. CAM has secured $500,000 in funding from philanthropic sources since January as part of those efforts. Regulatory approvals But CAM’s vision for the El Rey is far from guaranteed and requires navigating a hodge podge of Seattle housing- and property-related entities. First and foremost is the SOH, which would have to change the El Rey’s charter to make the CAM-led project possible.  “Generally, [SOH] will only approve reinvestment in existing rental housing when the cost to preserve is less than or equal to the cost to produce replacement housing at similar affordability levels, and when preservation will not adversely impact the ability of the provider to maintain the rest of its portfolio or to create new, needed affordable homes,” explains Reybern, the Office of Housing spokesperson. She adds that SOH has “had early conversations with Common Area Maintenance about a transfer” but no decisions have been made, and they will continue their evaluation once a plan is submitted that meets the required criteria. Firth acknowledges that these proposals involve the thorny question of amending a mental health- and low income-focused property charter—especially amidst a shortage of mental health beds. He supports reducing the number of units required in the building so that they can offer studio-sized units, increasing the income requirements to 80% of the area’s median income, and striking the mental-health focus of the charter. In his view, upholding the original charter isn’t feasible on a small lot the size of the El Rey, where SOUND previously housed more than one person in some rooms to meet its statutory obligations. CAM is attempting to retain some amount of affordable housing in the neighborhood, and bring it back within a shorter period, avoiding the uncertainty that would come with the building’s wholesale demolition. “There’s this sliver of a chance that it can become housing; that feels really hopeful and exciting to me,” Firth says. “I think that kind of contributes to the broader spectrum or ecosystem of livability, survivability in the city … We're a small community really trying to do the best work that we can, and we see people and a lot of systems failing in the city, and we're just trying to hold on to any little piece that we can.” CAM would also face an uphill battle financially, and would most likely have to secure funding from the Equitable Development Initiative as well as Doors Open. Not to mention wrangling the potentially unforeseen costs that come with attempting to retrofit a 125-year-old building for multipurpose use. For now, all eyes remain on SDCI. Will SOUND get the green light to demolish the El Rey? Come April, Belltown may be the nascent home to a repurposed affordable-housing project—or another razed lot.  ...read more read less