Vision

The University District Ecumenical Campus Coalition envisions a new building model that transforms churches as well as the surrounding community. In this model a sustainable Ecumenical Campus houses multiple faith communities and ministry programs along with the social service agencies they support, and a civic commons is integrated into the mixed uses of a vital urban center.

Each congregation worships according to its unique traditions, yet all share fellowship in a larger ecumenical community as well as infrastructure, maintenance, and parking. Essential human services that were scattered throughout the neighborhood gather into one place and coordinate their work with the help of church funds and volunteers.

The development’s commercial spaces help to capitalize project costs, generate income to fund more ambitious ministries, and knit the whole into the urban fabric of the community.

A park and other public areas contribute to the sense of a lively, healthy public “commons.” Secured at night and for special events but otherwise open and available as a gift to the community, they provide all-important open space in a district of increasing urban density.

Hundreds of affordable housing units - now in critically short supply – can take the place of surplus church real estate.

This is the proposed University District Ecumenical Campus in Seattle.