BOTHELL—Bothell United Methodist Church is planning to build a new affordable housing complex and community space in downtown Bothell, right across the street from McMenamin’s Anderson School and Pop Keeny Stadium.

The building will span around 240,000 square feet, be six stories tall, and have 200 units of housing – meaning tenants are expected to pay no more than 30% of their income on rent – a community space, café, and a social gathering place for Bothell residents. In this 6,000 square-foot community space will also be offices for various human services for anyone who might need them.

“This community space will be a space where people that live downtown and just walk on down, meet their neighbors, hang out, do their work, show their art, play their banjo – whatever it is,” said BUMC Pastor of Community Engagement Kristin Joyner. “We hope the community will help activate that space.”

BUMC sent out an RFP early in the process and sided with BRIDGE Housing as its partner who will be conducting the designing and actual building of the facility.

The Bothell City Council authorized a Letter of Intent with the Church on July 16 to allow a purchase and sale agreement to be signed. Once that document is complete early designing could begin as early as 2025, with early permitting beginning that same year, and construction beginning some time in 2026.

The Church says the process could take up to a decade to complete after permitting, securing the necessary funds, feasibility studies, community outreach, and other preliminary work, but hopes the project will reach completion by 2028 if all goes according to plan.

The community space alone, which will be located on the ground floor of the facility, is projected to cost around $3 to 4$ million dollars of which BUMC is putting in $1.4 of its own money. BRIDGE Housing, who will be handling the funding for the project, will likely have to secure grants and other funding options to cover the rest.

“This is a gift to the community so even though Bothell UMC will be the owner of the land there is only one thing we can do with that land and that’s to make it of use to the community,” said Joyner.

Pastor Joyner has been with the church for nearly 30 years, beginning her time as a member of the ministry and working her way up to clergy a little over seven years ago.

Reverend Joyner’s ‘aha’ moment was when an associate pastor said “Bothell United is the city’s best kept secret.” Joyner, believing the church should have more outreach to the community, said to herself: well someone should do something about this.

She entered her role as Pastor, by way of the Claremont School of Theology, with the goal of connecting the church to the community and the community to the church.

While undergoing her seminary Joyner developed the position of Pastor of Community Engagement. The way she explains it is Lead Pastor Joe Kim is 80% the congregation and 20% community while she is 80% community and 20% congregation.

Around the same time Joyner studying to become Pastor the Church had been running its Community Kitchen for about nine where anywhere between 30 to 60 people would come in for a free, hot, and fresh meal each Sunday evening.

Separate to this the congregation had been doing several things for the community for years including supporting the Northshore School District students with school supplies through Threads and Treads, holding food drives for the Maltby Food Bank, and holding the East Side Baby Corner (now Kid Vantage).

Through the Community Kitchen Joyner met many of her community members who she never and began adding community resources along the way including free legal help and free medical help.

“I was just really trying to understand the population that we were working with,” Joyner told the Lynnwood Times. “Bothell wasn’t known for having a lot of homelessness and poverty but we were starting to see more and more of it.”

The Bothell United Methodist Church is literally ingrained in Bothell’s history.

The first time Bothell United Methodist began its conversation surrounding building an affordable housing unit for Bothell residents was in 2018, stemming from a realization that there was a crises of homelessness and affordable housing options.

The Church began holding focus groups with leading organizations to try and figure out what it can do as a church. It settled on the question “how can we be a part of the solution before people become homeless,” Joyner informed the Lynnwood Times. From this the idea of building an affordable housing unit arose.

Joyner said there’s often times a stigma of going to a food bank — some times people, regardless of how desperate they needs its assistance. But, she began to wonder, if there was a community space where people would normally be attracted to go to, that just so happened to give out food, then what would that look like. She looked at the Hanger and Third Place Commons in nearby Kenmore and Lake Forest Park, respectively, for inspiration.

These ideas grew in response to hearing the needs of the community by way of the Bothell City Council, of which Bothell United has been in communication about this idea for several years since.

“We grew in response to what the City Council was saying to us and to hearing what the needs were,” said Joyner. “Really all of this came from trying to respond to hearing what the needs were.”

The first time Bothell United Methodist came together as a church was in November, 1885, before United Methodist was even an entity and 20 years before the City of Bothell was even founded.

The City of Bothell is even named after Alice and her husband George Bothell, who founded the Bothell United Methodist Church, and their family.

The Church broke ground on their first facility in 1957 and again in 2001 expanded to its current facility at 18515 92nd Ave NE.