Home Forward and Urban League Awarded City Contract to Build Apartments at Broadway Corridor

The 34-acre Broadway Corridor site, owned by the city, has been empty since 2016.

post office site The U.S. Post Office site in 2017. (Thomas Teal) (THOMAS_TEAL)
By Sophie Peel

Racial justice nonprofit Urban League and Home Forward, the city’s housing authority, won $42 million in local tax dollars to build a 14-story apartment building on the site of the old U.S. Postal Service mail-processing facility on Northwest Broadway.

The 34-acre Broadway Corridor site, owned by the city, has been empty since 2016. Prosper has faced setbacks to turning the site into a mixed-use hub with affordable apartments, commercial space and social services.

Continuum Partners, a Colorado-based developer, pulled out of plans to develop the site in 2021. Earlier this year, the Portland Housing Bureau solicited bids for the affordable housing project—the first structure expected to rise from the acreage.

Urban League and Home Forward won the money with a plan for 230 affordable apartments, an early learning center, a playground, and a community garden.

Most of the money for the development—$37.5 million—will come from the Metro regional government’s affordable housing bond, the Housing Bureau said. The remaining $4.5 million will come from tax increment financing.

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.