Large-scale Bellingham housing projects coming online in 2024
Two large-scale housing projects in Bellingham expect to welcome tenants for the first time in 2024.
The RJ Group, a Bellingham-based residential and commercial real estate company, is developing both projects.
The Celestia
The Celestia is a four-story, 110-unit, rental apartment building with a mix of studios, one-bedroom units and two-bedroom units.
The housing was built on a vacant lot in the Cordata neighborhood located directly across the street from The Crescent, its five-story sister apartment building, at 420 N Stuart Road.
The Celestia will offer a variety of on-site amenities for tenants including electric vehicle charging stations, a fitness center, a dog wash station, secured indoor bike storage, and a community lounge and deck that feature mountain views. Tenants will also have access to multiple trails and use of Cordata Park.
Cordata Park and its wetlands within it were previously created in collaboration with the city of Bellingham to mitigate the impacts of the multifamily developments, according to The RJ Group project manager Scarlet Ponder.
Aurora Court Phase 3
Aurora Court Phase 3 is a mix of 90 rental and for-sale townhomes on Traverse Drive in Bellingham. The development is the sister project of the recently completed Aspengrove townhomes.
Aurora Court Phase 3 began construction in March 2023 and is expected to welcome residents into its first 36, two-story townhomes by late 2024. The other 54 townhomes are expected to begin construction in August of 2024 and be complete by the summer of 2025.
The development will also feature a new public park, named Northern Lights Park. Crews are expected to start construction on the park this summer in the center of the development. The park will feature a “Bamboo Forest” themed playground and climbing rocks with playground equipment that was selected through a public input process facilitated by the Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department.
Meeting the need
The RJ Group did not provide an estimated cost per unit of the new developments to The Bellingham Herald.
However, as of December 2023, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Bellingham was $1,525, according to data from Zumper. Rent prices for one-bedroom apartments in Bellingham have increased by 7% in the last month and have increased by 9% in the last year, according to rental listing service Zumper.com.
By 2044, Whatcom County is estimated to need almost 35,000 new housing units to meet growth demand. About 22,000 of those units, more than 60%, need to be classified as affordable, according to Blake Lyon, Bellingham’s director of planning & community development.
“While it is quite impossible for a single builder to solve a housing crisis which has emerged through a nexus of land use, market and policy systems, these new townhomes and apartment units are an important contribution to Bellingham’s housing ecosystem,” Ponder said of The RJ Group’s new developments.
Bellingham makes up about 48% of the housing production in Whatcom County. So the city will need to produce almost 17,000 total housing units to help meet the demand. More than 10,000 of those need to be considered affordable. To stay on track, the city needs to build more than 500 affordable housing units every year.
Washington needs to develop more than 1 million homes over the next two decades to keep up with population growth, according to the Washington State Department of Commerce. More than half of them need to be affordable for residents at the lowest income levels.
