Employees may not buy flashy new cars in celebration but there are probably going to be at least a few pairs of fancy new shoes on display around 12th Ave this week after Capitol Hill-headquartered start-up Walk Score’s big deal with Seattle-based online real estate company Redfin:
The real estate brokerage today is announcing the acquisition of Walk Score, a 10-person Seattle company that ranks millions of addresses across the country based on their walkability, bikeability or proximity to public transportation. It does this on a scale of 1 to 100 by measuring the distance from a specific addresses to certain neighborhood amenities, such as schools, restaurants, libraries and coffee shops.
Walk Score creates technology to measure walkability, bikeability and proximity to public transportation. You can check out your address’s score here. In 2012, the company secured a $2 million first round of financing.
The tie-up, Mobilisafe CEO Giri Sreenivas points out, marks the second recent successful “exit” for tenants of the Hunters Capital-owned Ballou Wright building on 12th Ave:
looks like 1517 12th Ave in Cap Hill has some good startup juju. two startup exits (Mobilisafe + WalkScore) congrats to the @walkscore team!
— Giri Sreenivas (@giri_sreenivas) October 23, 2014
CHS reported on the move of Walk Score to Seattle’s “16th most walkable neighborhood in winter 2013. “We decided to move to Pike/Pine because our company is all about walking, biking, public transit, and great destinations,” co-founder Matt Lerner said at the time. “I think Pike/Pine is like the Brooklyn of Seattle.”
We’ve asked the company for more information on what comes next. While smaller companies have found niche office space around Capitol Hill, others like Simply Measured eventually find themselves growing off the Hill.
CHS looked at the effort to create new office space developments on the Hill and the types of tenants that might someday call the buildings home here.
Meanwhile, the 12th Ave Ballou Wright building continues its longtime role as home to Capitol Hill commerce. CHS wrote about the building’s overhaul and tech-savvy tenants here in 2011. For years, the building was home to Klineburger Brothers, one of the largest custom taxidermists in the country. Today, in addition to its tech and creative tenants like the Creature agency, the building also is home to new-era juice bar and cafe Juicebox.
Terms of the Redfin deal were not disclosed. Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman also gets a lot of business done on Capitol Hill. He and his wife purchased a home near Volunteer Park in 2010 for $1.78 million, according to King County records. The home boasts a 90-level “walk score” marking the area as a “walker’s paradise.” While it also rates as a 91-level “biker’s paradise,” the 1906-built, five-bedroom house boasts only a 60-level score for transit options. We recommend he bike or walk to Redfin’s 1st Ave headquarters.