The greater Seattle area is home to a growing number of East African immigrant and refugee families. For nearly a decade, African Community Housing & Development (ACHD) has worked alongside this community to build pathways to housing stability, health, and economic opportunity. ACHD expanded this effort in 2025 with the purchase of several lots in the White Center neighborhood of Seattle, intended for development into a multi-use community facility.
From Fall 2025 through Spring 2026, the planning team at New Venture Advisors partnered with ACHD on a concept development study for a Seattle International Public Market (SIPM) at their White Center site. This concept was intended to further ACHD’s ongoing commitment to building culturally responsive, community-driven infrastructure for the region’s African Diaspora communities.
The Opportunity
African Community Housing & Development is a nonprofit serving African Diaspora immigrant and refugee communities across King County through housing, economic development, and education programs. ACHD’s food access work, including its farmers’ markets, has long served as a bridge to healthy food and entrepreneurship for the community it serves.
The Seattle International Public Market concept builds on NVA’s earlier feasibility study, sponsored by the Port of Seattle in partnership with King County, that explored a public market for the region. ACHD saw an opportunity to build upon this vision for a new site in White Center, and, working alongside architecture firm Miller Hull, sought to translate the concept into a facility built specifically around its community’s needs: year-round retail space for small vendors, shared commercial kitchens for food entrepreneurs, flexible event and gathering space, and business incubation services.
To turn this vision into an actionable, financially sustainable plan, ACHD engaged New Venture Advisors to lead a concept development study running in parallel with the architectural design process.
Partnering with New Venture Advisors
In an effort to validate initial assumptions around market use and functionality, ACHD sought to develop the market concept and refresh the research in tandem with furthering the architectural design for the site. New Venture Advisors supported by:
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- Conducting operational research into retail, shared kitchen licensing, and site considerations — identifying, for example, that Washington’s strict cottage food licensing rules and limited local hourly kitchen rentals created a clear market opportunity for the facility, while also surfacing cultural needs such as halal food preparation and gender-separated event spaces.
- Developing a program model built around five core components — market retail, a production kitchen, event spaces, office and business incubation space, and supporting infrastructure — each defined by its primary users, staffing needs, and revenue model.
- Building a financial model that tested multiple operational scenarios for the facility, projecting costs and revenue for all programs.
- Designing a tiered pricing structure, backed by market research, to help the facility maintain financial sustainability while ensuring the community entrepreneurs and organizations it was built to serve can afford to use it.
- Identifying partnership opportunities across anchor tenants, program operators, and co-located community services to strengthen the facility’s stability and community impact.
- Developing a comprehensive Phase 2 due diligence plan and three-year implementation timeline, covering user and audience profiling, partnership development, marketplace analysis, regulatory review, and funding strategy, to guide ACHD from concept through construction and opening.
Moving Forward
The concept development study provides ACHD with a validated operational model and a clear roadmap to advance the Seattle International Public Market toward construction. With several viable financial scenarios in hand, ACHD is now positioned to finalize its capital stack, deepen partnerships with anchor tenants and program operators, and move into the development work that will carry the project from design through a planned groundbreaking in 2027.
ACHD’s continued focus on community-centered development and equitable access to health and housing, balancing financial sustainability with its mission to serve East African immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs, offers a model for how community organizations can bring ambitious and culturally grounded infrastructure to life.
Photo courtesy of Miller Hull
