A 1901-era, three-story apartment building at 1411 Boylston Ave nominated for protections in January will move ahead with a meeting on designating the property as an official landmark Wednesday afternoon.
Possible protections for the so-called Belmont-Boylston “double house” are coming as Historic Seattle prepares to sell the property it renovated after purchasing a swath in the area in 1989. Continue reading
The old theater marquee has been boarded-up with hopes of lighting up for a new tenant
Capitol Hill will head into the new year with no clear plans for its two largest empty commercial spaces leaving an entire block of E Pike and one of Broadway’s most prominent corners shuttered, darkened, and disconnected.
A CHS review of real estate listings, construction and business permits, and details from commercial real estate professionals familiar with the properties shows that both the 7,200-square-foot former Broadway Rite Aid and the boarded-up 8,000-square-foot E Pike grocery formerly home to Amazon Fresh are likely to remain empty well into 2025.
Both of the spaces are especially challenging leases as their relatively massive square footage collides with the rates typically required in the current Capitol Hill commercial real estate market. Meanwhile, there are fewer and fewer smaller suites available with recent closures mostly quickly claimed by new tenants.
201 Broadway E, where the Rite Aid was shuttered a year ago as massive drugstore chains filed for bankruptcy to settle federal and state opioid lawsuits, the property is being marketed as the “historic Broadway Theater” as its owners look for a new tenant.
That search is a major challenge. The building’s longtime local ownership was not interested in talking about it.
“I spoke with the owner, and he prefers no comments at this time,” one agent involved with the listing told CHS. “Best of luck with your work.” Continue reading
(Image: Cornish College of the Arts)
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The nonprofit that operates the Paramount, the Moore and the Neptune is buying Capitol Hill’s Kerry Hall but the 103-year-old Cornish College property just off North Broadway won’t become the latest addition the Seattle Theater Group’s roster of live music and performance venues.
An announcement from Cornish on the sale said STG “will use the building to grow and expand its community-centered arts programming.”
STG says AileyCamp, a summer dance-focused day camp provided to middle school-aged kids at no charge and supported by corporate and foundation sponsors as well as King County arts grants, will expand into the E Roy studio and performance hall.
The organization will share “a detailed business plan in the new year,” the announcement said.
King County records shows STG paid Cornish $6 million in the transaction recorded Friday.
Students rallied for the building earlier this year (Image: @save_kerry_hall)
CHS reported here as Kerry Hall hit the Capitol Hill real estate market in April. At the time of Cornish’s announcement that it was finally preparing to sever its final ties to its birth neighborhood and fully move its campus to South Lake Union, the arts school did not include a price for the E Roy property and three-story building just off Broadway within the Harvard-Belmont Landmark District. Continue reading
A single-family style home neighboring multifamily housing on Capitol Hill (Image: City of Seattle)
One thing is back to normal coming out of the pandemic. Seattle’s property values are on the rise again.
The King County Assessor’s office says residential property values rose in “most Seattle neighborhoods” as it establishes valuations for the next year and mails out notices to homeowners.
County assessor John Wilson says median residential property values “rose by 6.5% in Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, and by 6.2% in Leschi/Madison Park” while values fell by 2.5% in Seward Park.
The office says “preliminary indications” show most residential areas of King County will increase more than 10% on average in the new assessment. “Commercial properties are more mixed depending on property type,” according to the announcement. Continue reading
(Image: @save_kerry_hall)
(Image: @save_kerry_hall)
Monday, Cornish College of the Arts students gathered along E Roy on Capitol Hill for a sit-in at Kerry Hall. Their hope is to save the historic building — and keep the 103-year-old studio and performance hall as a center for arts and learning on Capitol Hill.
There is also a Save Kerry Hall group formed with hopes of asking Cornish to reconsider the decision — or help shape the old building’s future by finding a buyer dedicated to continuing its role in the city’s arts scene.
“Most of us feel that the Cornish school should not be sold and it could be part of a vision of Cornish in other ways on Capitol Hill, so [there’s] this sort of long standing threat and feeling of insecurity for many of us as far as the future of Kerry Hall,” Elizabeth Jane Darrow, a former Cornish faculty member who has been helping organize efforts to save the building, tells CHS.
CHS reported here as Kerry Hall hit the Capitol Hill real estate market in April. At the time of Cornish’s announcement that it was finally preparing to sever its final ties to its birth neighborhood and fully move its campus to South Lake Union, the arts school did not include a price for the E Roy property and three-story building just off Broadway within the Harvard-Belmont Landmark District. Its broker is now awaiting offers.
Cornish students staged the sit-in at Kerry Hall on Monday to raise awareness about the pending sale. The sit-in plan included improvisational dances by Cornish graduate Sylvia Schatz-Allison and an opportunity for students past and present to write goodbye letters to the building.
“The decision to divest from Kerry Hall is a strategic one, so that we can focus on our energies on teaching and learning,” James Falzone, academic dean and professor of music at Cornish told CHS about the planned sale. Continue reading
Listing: “The Egan House, with its stark geometric shapes and sleek black & white color scheme unapologetically emphasizes its stand-out qualities. While some details (floating staircase, open volumes,…) were aligned with a formal Modernist approach, others were imbued with romance and an art-first attitude.”
Spring 2024 seems to be a good season for those in the market for landmark-worthy homes for sale around Capitol Hill for under $1 million. The historic Egan House is now for sale along Lakeview Blvd E below the St. Mark’s greenbelt for $995,000.
The 1959-built modernist wedge was designated an officially protected city landmark in 2009 about ten years after preservation advocacy group Historic Seattle acquired the property in a $240,000 transaction.
The group says selling the Egan House now out of its portfolio fits in with its history of preserving and respectfully developing and improving properties, leasing them to generate income, and, eventually, selling them to reinvest the proceeds in the organization and new opportunities: Continue reading
(Image: Punk Rock Flea Market)
What began in an abandoned basement bar beneath the Low Income Housing Institute headquarters in Belltown led to the birth of the Punk Rock Flea Market. This June, PRFM will hold its first weekend sale in the former QFC on 15th Ave E that has been shuttered since 2021 to activate that space until the building is demolished to make way for new housing and new businesses.
“We’re ‘punk rock’ because we’re collaborative and very DIY, not because we adhere to any particular fashion or music choices. We’re open and friendly and weird, and everyone is welcome to buy and sell with us,” Joshua Okrent, PRFM founder, tells CHS.
While the public process and financing pathway for redevelopment can be lengthy and bumpy, the property’s developer Hunters Capital has been searching for short-term tenants to try to keep the block active until the six-story, 170-unit, mixed-use development with about 10,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space can dig in.
“The Punk Rock Flea Market will be here through the end of the year and will continue on a month-to-month basis next year,” Jill Cronauer, chief operating officer of Hunters Capital, told CHS.
The agreement means there will be time for multiple PRFM event over the coming months. The first is planned for June 22nd and 23rd the weekend before the big 2024 Pride festivities. Continue reading
“This is an urban oasis sited on a wooded corner lot, featuring 10’ ceilings, floor-to-ceiling glass along the west side, and a ribbon of corrugated glass skylights along the east roof line, providing ample daylight,” the listing boasts.
A home designed by a father of Seattle’s Space Needle and an architect remembered for his efforts to preserve Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market has hit the Central Seattle real estate market at 14th and Spring.
The 1950-built, 1,100-square-foot midcentury modern home was designed by Victor Steinbrueck, “a celebrated pioneer in Seattle’s historic preservation who also drafted early concept designs for the Space Needle,” as his own residence, the listing boasts. Continue reading
The real estate listing for the Kelly Springfield office space floors
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The big hopes of global office space giant WeWork leasing an entire Capitol Hill building went poof earlier this year. A smaller, West Coast office space giant is moving in.
Portland-based CENTRL Office has a deal for a new lease to take over the former WeWork floors of 11th Ave’s Kelly Springfield development, the preservation incentive-boosted, five-story office development that rises above the auto row-era bones of the neighborhood’s former Value Village.
CHS reported on WeWork shuttering the ambitious Capitol Hill location earlier this year amid the company’s massive bankruptcy.
The Kelly Springfield project from property owner Legacy Commercial and architects at Ankrom Moisan created three stories of new offices over the old auto row-era structure. That building was once the neighborhood’s Value Village and before that, REI, and long before that, the Kelly Springfield Motor Truck Company. CHS reported on the history and plans for the property in 2017 as the final designs for the project came together. Continue reading
Thanks to a reader for the picture
An important deal for the stability of the 15th Ave E business core has apparently fallen through.
Large “for sale” signage has been put up on top of the plywood panels covering the shuttered Coastal Kitchen following last month’s announcement that the restaurant and its building had been sold.
CHS reported in early February on the announcement from the Sound Restaurant Family company that includes the Mioposto pizza chain as well as a roster of South Sound venues including The Poodle Dog in Fife that it had a deal to sell the Capitol Hill Coastal property to new ownership bringing a new concept to the building that has housed the restaurant for more than 30 years. Continue reading
