How Flow Eastlake Turned a Site Below I-5 Into 103 Apartments

In May 2025, the Puget Sound Business Journal profiled Flow Eastlake, the five-story, 103-unit apartment building Eastlake Real Estate Partners developed at 3150 Fairview Ave. E. About seven years earlier, the firm paid nearly $6.4 million for the site, which once held the Ross Laboratory building. The property sits below Interstate 5, and building on it required a shoreline variance.

The nearly $40 million project made it through the COVID-19 pandemic, a construction loan rate that rose from the mid-4% range to 10%, a strike by concrete delivery drivers and the process of getting state approval to build near the shoreline.

Jeremy Febus, an engineer at KPFF, proposed a biofiltration system like the one at Northlake Commons. Flow’s bioswales are estimated to filter about 1.3 million gallons of freeway runoff a year on its way to Lake Union. Together with a public stairway between Fairview Avenue East and Eastlake Avenue East, they cost about $671,000. They also helped settle a shoreline variance problem that had at first threatened most of the building’s high-rent top-floor units. The team skipped certifications such as Salmon Safe and put that money into these neighborhood improvements instead.

As of May 15, 2025, the building was 85% leased. Market-rate rents ran in the low to mid $4s per square foot, and about 20% of the homes are income-restricted under Seattle’s multifamily tax exemption program. Flow has 27 equity investors. Sound Community Bank financed construction, and the firm was preparing to lock in a seven-year, interest-only Fannie Mae loan in the low to mid 5% range. Public47 Architects designed the building, and SACO Construction was the general contractor.

This is our summary. The full article by Marc Stiles appeared in Puget Sound Business Journal on May 29, 2025.