Apartment complexes bring 590 new units to Renton

DevCo Residential Group hosted a ribbon-cutting event for the opening of their two new apartment complexes in Renton, Astra and Solera, on June 21.

The new apartments bring 590 new units to NE 11th Street in the Sunset Neighborhood. Astra, the fully “affordable” community, has 275 units with one-bedroom, one-bath apartments starting at $1,617, according to their website. Solera has 315 market-rate units with one-bedroom, one-bath apartments starting at $2,300, according to their website.

“We’re here to celebrate the opening of 600 units in this project,” Renton City Councilmember James Alberson Jr. said at the event. “They’re not just units, they’re actually, obviously, homes. Families are going to move in here, make memories and are going to grow. It really is a community.”

The plans for the neighborhood go back to 2006, when the city put together the Sunset Area Revitalization Program.

“The vision, really, was to make a walkable neighborhood with affordable units,” Alberson said. “I think they’ve done a really good job of getting to this point and we look forward to seeing exactly how it really grows and the vision is actually fulfilled.”

Alberson described the area originally designated as temporary World War II housing as a “hot mess” by the early 2000s. Alberson said they have added the parks, library, recreational facilities and commercial spaces to the area since creating the program to “transform” the neighborhood.

“It’s a really cool neighborhood with how much energy was put into the library and the park. We’re very excited to be neighbors,” DevCo President David Ratliff said.

Ratliff said the site was identified by DevCo — a development, investment, and property management company focused on multi-family communities — in 2019 and they broke ground in fall 2021. Astra opened in November 2024, and Solera opened in May 2025.

“Solera and Astra are more than buildings. They are about lives, about creating stability for all walks of life. Families will grow here. Children will play in the nearby park and walk to school,” Ratliff said. “These homes are generally a response to the housing challenges our region continues to face.”

Financial contributions

The Evergreen Impact Housing Fund (EIHF), a partnership managed by the Seattle Foundation that provides impact capital to build more affordable apartments in Washington state, contributed $11 million in philanthropic funds to finance development of units in the Astra apartments.

“It’s such a critical time, maybe more now than ever, to have these kinds of projects go up,” Seattle Foundation EIHF fund manager Ken Takahashi said. “We are proud to be part of the solution that helps develop affordable family-sized units that’s close to transit and major services here.”

EIHF’s contribution to the Astra apartments comes from an infusion of private capital from five local credit unions: BECU, Salal Credit Union, Sound Credit Union, Verity Credit Union, and WSECU.

“Competition between financial institutions is not uncommon, but credit unions operate from a different lens and we frequently work together in support of our members and our communities,” BECU Vice President Jill Vicente said. “In this case, it was by pooling our funds together, along with The Seattle Foundation and EIHF, to provide last mile funding for these projects.”

Vicente said financial health and well-being are critical for all credit unions.

“When families are spending more than half their income on rent, there’s not a lot left for groceries or health care or education or savings, and those are all critical things to our families and local economies,” Vicente said.