Finch Green housing project on track for fall groundbreaking
Published 1:30 am Friday, May 22, 2026
In early 2024, Finch Green LLC and Housing Resources Bainbridge entered a partnership for an affordable housing project. Bethany Lutheran Church donated a portion of its land to HRB, which will develop the housing alongside Finch Green. The homes are bordered by Finch Road, Sportsman Club Road and High School Road.
There will be a total of 22 single-family homes, with seven of them being accessible, with zero-step entries and ground-floor accessible bathrooms. The homes range from 800 to 1,400 square feet with two to four bedrooms. “At Finch Green, we are essentially building the archetypal village,” said architect Jonathan Davis. “This design encourages casual interactions among neighbors as they walk to and from their cars and the bus stop. But of course, there are ample places for privacy too.”
In September 2025, an application for subdivision was submitted to the city to create individual tax parcels for each home. Once that subdivision is approved, building permits will be submitted for approval. In March 2024 and again in May 2026, Finch Green appeared before the Planning Commission and before a hearing examiner May 19.
“Every decision, from the siting of the buildings to the use of healthy materials, is made with the environment in mind,” said Davis. “The homes at Finch Green will have a small footprint and be clustered close together so that they cover less than 20% of the 8-acre site. Parking will be consolidated on the existing church lot, eliminating the need for driveways and reducing stormwater runoff. This judicious land use will allow us to preserve undeveloped land for community greenspace and rain gardens and optimize stormwater infiltration to replenish the aquifers.”
HRB was awarded $3.3 million from the Washington State Housing Trust Fund and $1.6 million through the Department of Commerce Connecting Housing to Infrastructure Program (CHIP). $600,000 of the CHIP funding was an allocation from the state budget, due to the advocacy of Sen. Drew Hansen, Rep. Tarra Simmons and Rep. Greg Nance, shared HRB communications director Tamar Kupiec. HRB also applied to the Bainbridge Community Foundation as part of its Community Grants Cycle. HRB has received the maximum grant funding from government sources and now looks to the community to raise the remainder, with the deadline to donate June 12.
The remainder of funds will come from home sales and HRB’s capital campaign. The public phase for the project was just launched and HRB is on schedule for a fall 2026 groundbreaking as planned.
The land at Bethany Lutheran Church was an eight-acre gift almost 75 years ago from a benefactor, with the intention of building a sanctuary. Affordable housing on Bainbridge Island was identified as the most compelling use of this land, and in 2019, Washington State passed a law requiring cities and towns to grant religious organizations an increased density bonus to build affordable housing on their land. Soon after, Bethany Lutheran Church created a nonprofit, Finch Green LLC, to see the project through.
“The physical design will make Finch Green a place of welcome. That the homes are affordable will make it all the more so,” said Davis.
