A Room With A View - But Not A Stove -- Company Finds Market Here For Tiny Apartments

What's most conspicuous about the 118 tiny, tidy studio apartments that opened recently in downtown Bellevue is what's missing.

Stoves.

Tenants of the Pacific Inn Apartments get a microwave and a single-burner hot plate in their 300- to 550-square-foot room.

Who wants to live like that? Apparently, lots of people. Seven months after opening on 112th Avenue Northeast, the place is nearly full.

At a time when spacious, luxury apartments are crowding into city centers, Bellevue's Pacific Inn and others like it in downtown San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle are reviving an old idea that had all but disappeared after World War II - small, single rooms aimed mostly at people who are starting out or starting over.

Winslow & Wells, which built Pacific Inn, thinks efficiency apartments provide an alternative for the urban work force left out by a housing industry that has prized size and luxury over economy.

But the project hasn't pleased everyone in Bellevue. Critics see the apartments as overpriced shoeboxes more likely to attract drifters. Even some who support affordable housing wonder if such compact, simple units are a healthy way to deal with the issue.

The Pacific Inn - with beach-theme decor and a blue, green and yellow exterior - is Winslow & Wells' first foray into what once was the suburbs.

The San Diego company has built more than 1,000 efficiency apartments in other areas, including Seattle's Marvin Gardens Inn Apartments in Belltown and The Vermont Inn Apartments in the Denny Regrade area.

In Bellevue, partner Tom Wells saw an opportunity in a fast-growing downtown that offered almost no places where baristas, bank tellers, receptionists, cashiers or hotel workers could afford to live.

One layout fits all

The layout in each unit is nearly the same: a half-size refrigerator that fits under the kitchen counter, a small bathroom, a sofa that unfolds into a single bed, a table for one, a chest of drawers, desk, chair and window. Some units have a bedroom loft.

The room is tight, but at $325 a month, Elizabeth Stevenson isn't complaining. The 23-year-old receptionist was looking for a place that was cheap and, because she doesn't own a car, within walking distance of her downtown Bellevue job.

It took some adjusting for her to move into a studio apartment last winter. But the Pacific Inn is safe, clean and staffed 24 hours a day.

"Basically, I was living to pay the rent before, and it just wasn't worth it," she said. "Now, I can save up some money and maybe buy a condo."

Because she doesn't earn a lot, Stevenson qualified for one of the Pacific Inn's 26 subsidized apartments. The market-rate units in the building can go for more than twice that amount, up to $805.

Parking, cable and even a weekly cleaning service are additional.

So far, the building has attracted a wide range of tenants. About two-thirds of the renters are in their 20s or 30s. Nearly 80 percent work in Bellevue, mostly in restaurants, stores or the computer industry, Wells said.

The most expensive units turn over faster, rented mostly by people moving to the area or working temporary jobs, Wells said. He expects the average stay will be 12 to 18 months.

Units aren't cheap

Although $800 for a studio apartment is expensive, it's a bargain for something in a new building, said Mike Scott of Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors.

"You just can't build new and rent for that," Scott said. "The economics just aren't there."

To Bob Wallace, president of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and a downtown Bellevue landowner, it hardly seems a bargain at all. Considering the price of rent per square foot, he says the studios are some of the most expensive apartments in downtown.

Wallace has been a critic of Pacific Place from the start, and he still has doubts, though the problems he anticipated with overflow parking and troubled tenants haven't developed.

Mostly, Wallace objected to the $600,000 subsidy the developers received from the city of Bellevue and tax-exempt financing from the state Housing Finance Commission.

"(The developers) convinced everyone they are do-gooders, but they are absolutely milking money out of the thing," Wallace said. "If there were any project in Bellevue that didn't need a subsidy, it is that one."

But Wells isn't apologetic. His company has used subsidies on many projects. Without them, even fewer apartments could be set aside for low-income workers, he said.

Efficient use of space

And in terms of putting the most new homes on the least amount of land, there are few designs better than single-room apartments.

That's one of the reasons efficiency apartments boomed the first half of the century, said Paul Groth, an architectural historian at the University of California, Berkeley.

People were pouring into cities to fill newly created jobs, and the tight-packed apartments were cheap, close to work and offered the kind of privacy and freedom that traditional boarding houses didn't.

But the style fell out of favor after World War II, the victim of rising salaries, the availability of cars, white flight and the general decline of downtown areas, Groth said.

In the decade since Wells began resurrecting the concept, he has had to convince a lot of people - including himself - that it has a place in today's cities.

Market overlooked

For Wells, it began in the mid-1980s, when he and his partner bought an old single-room-occupancy hotel on the edge of downtown San Diego with plans to renovate it into 12 "yuppie" apartments.

They changed their minds after seeing how much money was coming in from the rents.

"We realized that the people living there were mostly downtown workers, and this was the cheapest place to live and walk to downtown," he said. "There was a pretty significant market being overlooked."

They soon built others around San Diego, then brought the concept to Seattle. The company opened Marvin Gardens in 1990 and the Vermont Inn two years later, each with 175 units.

Seattle subsidized both buildings. In return, rents are capped on most of the apartments to keep them within reach of low-paid workers.

The projects sparked interest in Bellevue - and a call from then-Mayor Cary Bozeman. Wells passed at first, figuring the city wasn't ready yet.

But by 1995, with the opening of Bellevue's Meydenbauer convention center and plans for major commercial and office developments in the pipeline, the project began to make sense.

Bellevue wanted changes

Even so, Bellevue wasn't quite prepared for Winslow & Wells. Unlike Seattle, Bellevue required the Pacific Inn to have garage parking and include some units that were larger than the standard 300-square-foot studio.

So the architect re-configured some of the rooms with lofts to make them more spacious.

By building small, Winslow & Wells is bucking a trend in an industry that has seen the average-sized apartment grow to 900 square feet from 750 square feet 20 years ago.

But the fact that the company's buildings are full means it has stumbled onto a market few others recognized, Scott said.

"To my knowledge, they really are the pioneers of this," Scott said. "If they don't have an exclusive on the niche, they are one of the few."

Wells said his company plans to build more single-room apartments as long as the market holds out, including another project in Seattle.

"We aren't apologetic about the design," Wells said. "It is purposeful."

J. Martin McOmber's phone number is 206-515-5628. His e-mail address is: mmcomber@seattletimes.com