May 2026

A concept for community-owned redevelopment in Loyal Heights

The two assembled parcels at the southeast corner of NW 80th St and 24th Ave NW are listed for $8.8M as a redevelopment site. Whatever gets built there will reshape our neighborhood for the next several decades.

Do Loyal Heights residents want to own and govern that redevelopment, or do we want to watch it happen to us?

The answer is clear: in just 31 days since launching this site, 69 of our neighbors have pledged $2.32M to shape the future of Loyal Heights. 🙌

Sign up here to stay updated or indicate your interest.

Get Involved #

The fastest way to help is to fill out the interest form so we can gauge support and keep you posted.

Want to spread the word? Print a yard sign or a flyer:

Great flyers designed by Lindsey DeVries:

• Did You Know? Flyer — color (PDF)
• Did You Know? Flyer — black & white (PDF)
• Imagine Flyer — color (PDF)
• Imagine Flyer — black & white (PDF)

Other:

• Yard sign (PDF)
• Flyer — pink (PDF)
• Flyer — black & white (PDF)

The Idea #

Form a community-owned real estate entity to acquire the parcels, design and build something the neighborhood actually wants, and hold the resulting property as a long-term, neighborhood-owned asset. Equity holders share in appreciation and rental income. Community governance will allow equity holders to influence what gets built.

Why This Corner #

The intersection at 80th and 24th is the heart of our community. Let’s call it Downtown Loyal Heights (DTLH). From that intersection, you can see so many things that make our neighborhood great: a bakery, a fish shop, a butcher, a convenience store, a dance and music studio, (multiple!) preschools, medical offices, restaurants, and more. You can see part of Loyal Heights Elementary and catch a glimpse of Mount Rainier on clear days.

We’re lucky to live in a neighborhood with an impressive Walk Score of 73 and Bike Score of 81, but we can do better. DTLH should be the paragon of a walkable community center that is clean, safe, and appealing to people of all ages.

The current zoning supports up to 55 feet of mixed-use development. Done well, this becomes ground-floor neighborhood retail with a few apartments above, the kind of building that can make a community feel vibrant and safe. Done poorly, it becomes another generic anywhere-building with vacant storefronts being used as tax write-offs.

Loyal Heights is a remarkable neighborhood, and we have a chance to show the world what community-led growth can look like.

Why Now #

Ballard is changing fast. In 2019, Seattle City Council voted unanimously to upzone 27 neighborhoods, increasing density across Crown Hill and the broader Ballard area. More recently, the One Seattle Plan designated Ballard as a “Regional Center,” which is the city’s highest density category, alongside Downtown and Capitol Hill. Growth is coming whether we organize for it or not.

The Seattle Times just reported that Ballard’s 2026 first-quarter home sales were the highest since 2022, with buyers competing against town-home developers and all-cash investors. Town homes and ADUs are filling in the residential blocks north of 65th Street.

The redevelopment site at 80th and 24th is exactly the kind of parcel that, in the normal course of things, gets bought and built without the neighborhood having any say. We have a narrow window to do this differently.

Two-Phase Structure #

• Phase 1: Acquisition and development. Funded by accredited anchor investors under private-placement rules. This phase carries the development risk: entitlements, design, financing, construction.
• Phase 2: Neighborhood ownership. Once the building is built and leased, a meaningful portion of the equity (target 25–40%) is sold to Loyal Heights residents under crowdfunding or community-investment-trust rules. Anchors get partial liquidity. Long-term ownership shifts to the people who live here.

Tiers of Participation #

Anchor investors (~5 commitments at ~$1M each) #

Anchors provide the equity needed for acquisition and to secure development financing. They get a preferred return, board seats, and the financial upside that comes with bearing development risk. Accredited investors only, under standard private-placement rules.

Neighbor investors ($10K and up) #

Open to Loyal Heights residents. Neighbors get pro-rata equity, a voice in governance, and a real stake in what our corner becomes.

Smaller investors #

Once we’re on our feet, we should make it easy for more Loyal Heights residents to buy in at lower dollar amounts.

Governance #

History has a lot of lessons to teach about coordinated ownership within neighborhoods. Many of London’s most beloved neighborhoods were built by “Great Estates” that owned land across many parcels and could coordinate design and stewardship over generations. A piece titled The fewer the merrier argues that this kind of unified ownership is one of the underrated reasons those neighborhoods turned out so well, and that fragmented ownership is one of the underrated reasons modern ones often don’t.

DTLH would recreate that effect democratically: our neighborhood should create a single coordinating owner for the corner, but it should be accountable to the neighborhood rather than an English duke (no offense to any dukes reading this).

How this will actually work is to be determined, and I’m not the person to decide it. But, here’s a sketch of what could be:

We would create two organizations: a nonprofit and a regular company.

The nonprofit – provisionally the Downtown Loyal Heights Trust – is run by neighbors. Its members are Loyal Heights residents who own shares in the company, and they elect the Trust’s board. That board is small and focused on the long view: what kind of place we want this corner to be, decades from now.

The company is the one that actually owns the real estate. The Trust controls it, and picks its board separately. The company’s board runs the building day to day: financing, leases, working with lenders and tenants. That work is technical and fast-paced, so the people doing it should know real estate and finance. Any anchor investor who wants a seat on this board will have one.

The company sells two kinds of shares. Economic-only shares are open to anyone and pay returns like a normal investment. Voting shares go only to Loyal Heights residents. Anyone can invest. Only residents vote.

The point of all this structure is to make sure the growth that’s coming attracts investment that benefits our neighborhood for the long term. The details of all of this – board sizes, what counts as a major decision, how voting works – will need to be worked out with counsel, anchors, and neighbors.

Where This Is #

Concept stage. I am in touch with the seller via their realtor, but we don’t have a credible offer to make yet.

No entity has been formed. No securities have been offered. The point of this document is to gauge interest from prospective anchors and from neighbors who would want to participate, and to inform conversations with the seller, securities counsel, and lenders.

If the response shows there are five anchors and a critical mass of neighbors who want to do this, the next steps are: development pro forma, securities counsel, letter of intent to the seller. If the response shows otherwise, the project doesn’t happen and no one is out anything but a few hours of conversation.

To Express Interest or Learn More #

• Write to Jed Sundwall at jed@dtlh.org
• Open an issue on the DTLH GitHub

Disclaimer #

I know nothing about commercial real estate ownership or development. This is a concept document, not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Any future investment will be subject to applicable securities laws and made only through formal offering documents to qualified investors.

No money should change hands for this at all. I’m absolutely not accepting money from anyone. Any pledges I’m tracking are not binding in any way whatsoever. Yes, I got the dtlh.org domain, but Downtown Loyal Heights is not a legal entity, let alone a 501(c)(3) organization. I’m not a lawyer, but I think if I TYPE IN ALL CAPS HERE I CAN GET MY POINT ACROSS. THIS IS NOT A THING YET.

FAQ #

Who made this site? #

Right now, it’s just me. My name is Jed Sundwall and I’ve lived at 80th and 21st since 2014. My wife and I have three kids. Next year, one will be at LHE, one at Whitman, and one at Ballard High. As far as I know, I’m the only Jed Sundwall in the world, so feel free to Google me. I maintain a professional bio at jed.co/bio and you can find me on LinkedIn.

Before long, this will be run by a bunch of Loyal Heights neighbors.

What’s your goal with this? #

This plan is not about what I want.

The goal is to create a space that people in Loyal Heights are proud of and take care of because they actually own it.

Everyone I’ve talked to about this has ideas of what they’d like to see at 80th and 24th. We already have a lot of businesses to love here, but I know that we could use more gathering spots for the people who live and work here. I’ve been lucky to live in places that have public spaces where people of all ages feel comfortable meeting and spending time together. I’d like us to have more spaces like that, but whatever comes of this will be a collaborative effort and it will inevitably not please everyone.

Is this weird? #

Not at all.

One way to look at this is as an invitation for people in Loyal Heights to band together as an investment team. A big chunk of our economy runs on the fact that total strangers can cooperatively own capital (i.e., publicly traded corporations). This would be a corporation owned by a regionally-specific group of owners. I’m highly confident that enough capital exists in the neighborhood to make this possible. My goal is to be diligent throughout this entire process to make sure that no money changes hands until we’re certain that it’s a sound investment.

A sound investment? Lame. What about [insert world-changing idea here]? #

Completing this transaction as described here is already hard enough. Let’s see if we can make a corner of our neighborhood really nice and take it from there.

The audacious proposal here is this: can we let a lot of people grow wealth over generations by building a beautiful neighborhood, rather than letting a few get rich quickly by building an ugly one?

We should make it possible for more people to own equity and have a say in the places where they plan to raise families and grow old. Right now, too many people are completely shut out from owning equity in anything. I’d like us to create a path for more people in our community to invest in – and benefit from – the growth of our region.

Are there any other examples of this? #

Yes, plenty. It is normal and cool for neighbors to decide they want a thing in their town and pool money to make it happen.

Residents forming an entity that collectively owns and governs commercial real estate has been working in U.S. neighborhoods since at least 2011. Here are some examples:

• NorthEast Investment Cooperative in Northeast Minneapolis was founded in 2011 by neighbors who were tired of watching property in their neighborhood sit poorly used. It’s often cited as the first commercial-property investment cooperative in the U.S. Members buy a $1,000 share, get one vote, and the co-op has bought, rehabbed, and leased multiple buildings since.
• NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative launched in 2015 in Brooklyn and grew to several hundred members pooling capital to buy commercial property in New York. Same one-member-one-vote structure as the NorthEast Investment Cooperative.
• Vermont Real Estate Cooperative incorporated in 2020 and acquired its first commercial property shortly after. Vermont residents buy in at $1,000 a share, get one vote regardless of how many shares they hold, and elect a seven-seat board that decides what to acquire.
• The East Portland Community Investment Trust linked above is structurally similar to what we’re proposing: a corporation owned by community investors who elect a board. What’s distinctive is the small-dollar accessibility: eligible residents make monthly auto-debit payments of $10–$100 that buy shares in the corporation each month, earning dividends and appreciating with the property. That monthly mechanism is the part most worth studying to make this project accessible to more people.

There are almost certainly other great examples. Email me if you think we should mention them here!

What even is Loyal Heights? #

I do not have an answer to this question! In any event, I’m not the one to answer it because our forthcoming board will have to.

The official city designation is too narrow. At a minimum, I’d include everything west of 15th between 65th and 85th. We can’t pull this off without our Sunset Hill neighbors.

I also don’t think we should be too choosy about who invests. We should encourage people far and wide to put capital into our neighborhood, but control and oversight of development needs to sit with residents who are committed to its long-term benefit. That can probably encompass most of greater Ballard, though I expect the majority of them will likely live closer to 80th and 24th.

This will make a fun board discussion.

What about parking? #

People will be upset about it no matter what. Again, we already boast a Walk Score of 73. We should aim for 100.

Where can I read more about these exciting ideas? #

No one actually ever asks me this, but here are some pieces that have shaped my thinking about these things:

• All firms are cooperatives – and so are governments by Henry Hansmann
• Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs
• Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott
• Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom
• A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein
• The fewer the merrier by Samuel Hughes

How are you counting pledges? #

Pledges shown on this page are non-binding indications of interest, gathered from conversations, emails, and the signup form. They’re counted as follows:

• Specific dollar amounts are counted at face value.
• Monthly pledges are counted at one year’s worth (e.g., “$50/month” counts as $600).
• Ranges are counted at the low end.
• Tier indications without a specific dollar amount are counted at the low end of the selected tier (e.g., “$10K–$50K” counts as $10,000).
• Duplicate submissions are removed by manual review before counting.
• The “neighbors” count is the number of individuals who have offered a pledge.
• The total represents the pledges I have at the time the page was last updated.

None of this is binding, and final figures will only matter if and when this becomes a real offering with formal subscription documents.