NEWBERG, Ore. — Local business and community leaders, city councilors, county commissioners, and a state representative gathered Monday for a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the launch of a new housing project in north Newberg, with ground scheduled to break Tuesday.
HIVE, an acronym for Housing Innovation Village Experience, is breaking ground at 3509 N. College St., launching a project years in the making that developers hope will have doors open to buyers within a few months.
“This is the end of the beginning,” said Missing Middle Housing Fund co-founder and CEO Nathan Wildfire. “It’s been the culmination of lots and lots of work.”
The project began in 2019 as a response to rising housing costs in the state. While multiple organizations were working to address affordable housing — defined as housing for those earning less than 80% of the area median income — there was little emphasis on building homes for workers earning between 80% and 120% of AMI. The average median household income in Newberg is $93,232 according to census data.
Wildfire said the team chose Newberg to test the concept because of the community’s strong employment base — including George Fox University, A-dec, Providence, and Friendsview — all of which identified middle housing as a significant barrier to recruitment and retention.
“When we started this project, it came down to asking a question of, ‘what would it take to keep these people here,'” said MMHF board member and SEDCOR’s Yamhill County Business Retention & Expansion Manager Abisha Romano. “It always came down to workforce housing.”
HIVE’s stated goal is to address that directly. The MMHF purchased the flag lot on College Street, which will have 10 homes built facing the center of the lot, two off-street parking spaces per home, and a central community hub.
The homes will range from 800 to 1,470 square feet with two to three bedrooms. They will be built using modular techniques intended to reduce time to occupancy and lower construction costs, and will feature sustainable building materials including cross-laminated timber and carbon-negative concrete.
The development is designed around a village living concept. The homes are situated in close proximity, many with little or no setback, meaning residents will interact more than the average homeowner. They will share a parking lot and, without individual yards, spend time communally in the central hub. A homeowners’ association will operate within the community.
“The other point of HIVE is to create a micro village,” said Ryan Olsen, HIVE project lead and manager of Elemental Building Technologies, in a February 2026 interview with Newsberg. “The community is a welcoming, nonthreatening space that’s got a fire pit, rooftop deck, community gardens — plenty of places for people to spread out and be alone if they want, but with the option for community connection when they need it.”
Olsen used a metaphor to explain how the HIVE model could make housing more affordable.
“Think about the clothes you’re wearing,” he said. “Do you know how expensive it would be if each item were handmade? Now scale that up to a home — each home is handmade. Just like we industrialized most industries, we need to industrialize home building.”
The Newberg project is intended as a model to replicate nationally. Olsen said traditional financing has been a challenge because investors typically require demonstrated success before committing funds. The project is seeking $250,000 to $300,000 in stabilization funding through sponsor partnerships, either financial or in-kind.
The local permitting process, he said, moved faster than expected with city cooperation.
“Instead of saying ‘no,’ the City of Newberg would say ‘let’s find a way,'” Olsen said. “It’s the first time we worked with a jurisdiction that worked with us to figure things out instead of adding more red tape or telling us that what we were asking for wasn’t possible.”
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With ground breaking Tuesday, construction will move on an aggressive timeline. Site preparation and foundation work will come first; once the foundations are poured, the homes can be assembled in less than two weeks.
“We’re building everything off-site so that when it gets on site, it’s just like a piece of IKEA furniture,” Olsen said during a site tour. “Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that, but you get the point.”
The homes are expected to be ready to show in October. Marketing materials list a starting price in the high $300,000s. Ben Nelson, the realtor for the development, said interested buyers can inquire and reserve a unit, but properties will not go on the market until late June.
Learn more at the HIVE website.
Correction June 3 at 3:10 p.m. — The original story stated Ryan Olsen’s business as Elemental Urban Living. The business name has changed to Elemental Building Technologies.
