Last week, the city's landmark preservation board voted 8-to-0 to designate the steam plant attached to Yesler Terrace, the city's—some say the nation's—oldest public housing project, as a historic landmark. But at the same time, the board also voted unanimously to reject Yesler Terrace's community center as historic.

The Seattle Housing Authority, which owns and manages Yesler Terrace (and nominated itself for historic designation to avoid problems down the road with redevelopment) was pleased with the news. "It’s definitely not a show stopper; we can accommodate the steam plant," says Anne Fiske-Zuniga, the SHA project manager for the redevelopment. Next week, the she expects to receive an environmental draft study examining the impacts of four alternatives to the aging complex—alternatives that would jump the number of units on the 28-acre site from 561 to as many as 5,000—reshaping the southern slope of First Hill to look more like downtown. Since the plans are still being discussed, the historic designation can be folded into the process. "There’s nothing locked down about the redevelopment plan," Fiske-Zuniga says. "Knowing we have a landmarked building is something we work with instead of around."

But Yesler Terrace residents and low-income housing activists were disappointed by the vote, if not surprised. "We were simply waiting for that decision to come down before we take it further, to a federal level," says John Fox, Executive Director of the Seattle Displacement Coalition. "Now we're exploring that option."

The full, weird back story on the vote is here, but in brief: The SHA wants to bulldoze Yesler Terrace and build a new, dense, mixed-income and retail complex. A group of Yesler Terrace residents and affordable housing activists—led by Fox—are protesting the project, saying it will drive out affordable housing in the area. And as any developer in Seattle knows, one way to stop a project is to nominate it for historic landmark status. Historic designation severely restricts what can be done to a property (thus lowering its overall value), which is why you see this and this happening. If Yesler Terrace were deemed a historic landmark, it couldn't be redeveloped. So the SHA beat activists to the punch by nominating itself for historic designation early on in the development process, before such an upset would cost them valuable time and money (also worth noting: a building can only be nominated once every five years).

And now activists are considering nominating all of Yesler Terrace for historic designation on the national historic register, which would trump the local designation (and would side-step the city's pesky five-year waiting rule for renomination). Rebuilding Yesler Terrace is expected to be a 15-year process and we're just at the beginning of it. Clearly, residents and activists are gearing up to fight redevelopment every step of the way.