Odd Fellows gets the glamour shot treatment (Image: Westlake Associates)
The 1908-built building that embodies pretty much everything — good and bad and in between — that Pike/Pine has become is for sale.
The Odd Fellows building at the corner of 10th and Pine and home to restaurants, retailers, and a rather popular ice cream shop hit the market mid-October. The price? A cool $30 million.
But this isn’t your typical $30,000,000 Capitol Hill building sale.
Brian Bergman, principal and managing broker at Westlake Associates, tells CHS the six-person partnership that owns the building have completed a refinancing of the property and “are now exploring other opportunities, including exchanging into a different asset class.”
“To this end, they have decided to list the building for sale for a limited time,” Bergman writes. “If a sale does not occur, the partners are happy to keep such a prime building in their portfolio.”
Bergman says the ownership isn’t eager to part with the historic property.
“The OddFellows Building is 100% leased, has great tenants and a long-term loan,” he said. “The partners are proud of the transformation to the building and surrounding neighborhood over the past 9 years of their ownership tenure.”
CHS wrote here about the transformation of Odd Fellows from a neglected but well-used home for arts groups and performance spaces after its $8.5 million acquisition in 2007. The Century Ballroom, the only arts organization to remain in the 100-year-old space after an exodus of tenants, will celebrate its 20th anniversary on Capitol Hill in 2017. Velocity Dance, Freehold Theatre, Reel Grrls, Annex Theatre, and the Seattle Mime Theatre were among the varied organizations that once called the Odd Fellows home. Today, the building is home to the Pike/Pine breakfast, lunch, and dinner cafe Oddfellows, retailers Fleet Feet, Nube and Brenthaven, Century and its sibling bar and restaurant The Tin Table, and a Cal Anderson-adjacent Molly Moon’s.
“The Oddfellows Building is one of the most unique buildings in Seattle,” the sales listing for the property reads:
Located in the heart of Capitol Hill at the confluence of Pike Pine Corridor and Pike Pine Triangle, Seattle’s premiere arts and entertainment district, The Oddfellows Building is 100% leased and offers prime retail and some of the most unique office space in the Pacific Northwest. The second and third floors were originally performance halls: They boast 25-foot ceilings and ornate period detail. An additional performance theater is located on the 4th floor, it also offers 25-foot ceilings and is currently occupied by a gaming company. No other building in Seattle offers this unique conglomeration of creative, active, design-oriented work spaces.
While the sales period plays out, the 108-year-old masonry building will be undergoing some work including a small project to fix up the outside of the building around Molly Moon’s and a bigger, much more expensive project to replace its old elevator.
High end condos anyone?
Probably,but hey, it’s still better than another metal sided box with a “splash”of color.
I wonder what is the seismic retrofit status for this building.
Oddfellows was retrofitted just a few years ago
Ah that makes sense and partially explains the high asking price.
“one of the most unique buildings in Seattle,” My late father was always of the opinion that something was either unique, or it wasn’t.
Like “I could care less,” “its” “a whole nother” problem with “you’re” upbringing. Personally, I see it as “the same difference.” Like jumbo shrimp or military intelligence.
Odd Fellows is one of the buildings owned by the (in?)famed Ted Schroth. Hopefully it remains a landmark building and doesn’t get a horrid facadectomy. This is one building in particular that needs to remain intact beyond its facade.
I so agree with you! A lot of times the best part of these old buildings is the interior and a lot of times those beautiful details are lost when the building is gutted.
That’s one of the few remaining actual dance floors in the city, built for art forms that are participatory as well as performative. Creator as well as consumer culture. It’s worth a lot, but it won’t pay $3e7 by itself.