Developers of Seabrook, the growing resort town on the north coast of Grays Harbor County, recently received approval for its first housing development in the nearby community of Pacific Beach.

The Grays Harbor County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a development agreement Tuesday morning with Placemaker Homes LLC, a Pacific Beach company led by Casey Roloff, co-founder and developer of Seabrook, to subdivide 17 acres into 95 lots, with plans for 158 units of new housing.

On land adjacent to state Route 109 and across from the Naval property, developers plan to build 82-single family homes, four duplex lots and 68 condo or apartment units in neighborhood pedestrian-friendly streets, green open spaces and courtyards similar to Seabrook.

The style may be similar, but unlike Seabrook, Roloff said, the Pacific Beach property was purchased “primarily to create more attainably priced housing.”

Approval for the new Pacific Beach development under Placemaker Homes follows major strides for the Seabrook Land Company in 2023, when it was approved for a pair of village additions that are expected to add a total of 365 acres and 1,100 new lots on either side of the current town, according to previous reporting by The Daily World.

With the expansion in motion, and in a pinched affordable housing market, Roloff said, Seabrook also wanted to ensure “adequate housing for people that wanted to live and work at the beach.”

“With over 150 homes, that will really help sustain the revitalization of Pacific Beach’s Main Street,” Roloff said in an interview. “There’s a lot of great things happening on Main Street.”

Sam Nielson, who leads planning and design of infrastructure at Seabrook and is the vice president of Engineering and Entitlements at Placemaker, told county commissioners via Zoom at a Tuesday meeting the new homes will be “a little bit smaller homes than what you see in Seabrook, hopefully a little more entry-level.”

“We’ve looked at a whole bunch of different options,” Nielson said at the meeting. “What’s included in this is some apartment buildings, apartments or condos, or however we break that up. There is some multi-family included in this to be able to meet those price points and demands.”

The development passed state environmental review in December through Grays Harbor County. The county’s planning commission recommended approving the project after a public hearing on Jan. 2 after receiving two testimonials in support of the development and none opposed.

Zoned resort-residential, the existing land is a mix of forested area with a few buildings, including a mobile home and a house.

According to the Grays Harbor County Assessor’s website, Placemaker Homes bought a 12-acre parcel for about $700,000 in October 2020 and bought a second, five-acre parcel containing a house for nearly $1.2 million in March of the following year.

According to planning documents, the development, in addition to housing, is permitted to include parks, trails and retail, although Roloff said he would prefer to rely on stores in downtown Pacific Beach rather than have Seabrook develop its own retail.

A little more than half the 17-acre project area will be developable lots, with about three-and-a-half acres of green space and the same amount of private roadways.

The county granted Placemaker Homes an exemption for typical speed and parking rules, allowing the development to impose slower speeds for the mixed-use, urban setting.

Nielson said those variances are based on urban street guidelines endorsed by the Washington State Department of Transportation and other agencies.

New houses within the planned development area also won’t be restricted by Grays Harbor County’s short term rental permitting requirements, as long as they are all managed by a single company. Roloff told The Daily World last year that all vacation rentals in Seabrook are managed by the town’s hospitality department, meaning it already has the infrastructure, like security and staffing, to mitigate potential problems with rentals, and because new developments are built from scratch, any short-term rentals won’t displace existing neighborhoods.

Roloff said the new development is intended to provide primary housing, not vacation rentals.

Expected to start this year, construction will occur in four phases, each consisting of anywhere from 10 to 50 lots. The timing of future phases will depend on market conditions, according to planning documents, and begin on the southern end of the property.

New houses will connect to Grays Harbor County’s water and sewer system in Pacific Beach.

Contact reporter Clayton Franke at 406-552-3917 or clayton.franke@thedailyworld.com.