Futuristic, low-priced homes with a past finally go on sale

By Tristan Baurick

Kitsap Sun

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND — If you ever dreamed of living in an iPod, now's your chance.
Two cutting-edge prototype homes, once heralded as the future of urban housing, are on sale on Bainbridge Island after a convoluted journey that took them from the roof of a downtown Seattle building to the old Bainbridge Island dump and finally to their current location on a Winslow street.
"A tremendous amount of work went into these," said Ken Balizer, executive director of Housing Resources Board (HRB), the nonprofit affordable-housing organization that hopes to sell the small, stackable homes for under $130,000 apiece.
Billed as "Ikea meets iPod" when they were unveiled three years ago, the homes are shiny, sleek and loaded with earth-friendly features and a few high-tech gizmos that baffle even Balizer.
The one-bedroom homes were built with energy-efficient windows, insulation, lighting and appliances; occupancy sensors to control lights and heat; recycled flooring materials; and a vegetated roof to reduce stormwater runoff.
The smaller, second-story unit, listed at just under $105,000, has 475 square feet of living space and a covered deck. The ground-floor, $129,900 unit has almost 700 square feet of living space.
HRB hopes to sell the homes to income-qualified homebuyers. The units would be owned by the occupants, the land underneath by HRB.
The homes were donated to HRB by Unico Properties, a Seattle firm that planned to manufacture them as a less-expensive alternative to Seattle condos. Unico prominently displayed the units on the roof of Rainier Square to drum up interest. When the plan didn't pan out, the units were moved to Bainbridge Island for use as low-cost housing at a city-owned Day Road farm.
But farmers objected because the homes wouldn't be limited to farmworkers. After another move fell through, the homes were stripped and stored at the former Bainbridge Island dump for six months. Last spring, they were brought to their current location on Knechtel Way.
HRB spent about $185,000 to move and restore the units. The most recent effort to relocate and fix up the homes was assisted by a volunteer construction manager, landscape architect, engineer, attorney and about 20 others, Balizer said.