Tag Archives: real estate

Assessor: Capitol Hill residential property values pop 6.5%, reversing pandemic trends

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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 →

Save Kerry Hall? Students stage sit-in, call for arts, music, and dance to be preserved as buyers eye historic property for housing and development

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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 →

The Lakeview ‘wedge’ house, Egan House latest historic home to hit Capitol Hill-area real estate market

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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 →

The Punk Rock Flea Market is coming back to Capitol Hill — Here’s when it will open and how long it might stay

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(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 →

For a million or so bucks, you can preserve the midcentury modern Central District home of Victor Steinbrueck

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“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 →

There is a lot of empty office space on 11th Ave. WeWork fizzled. CENTRL Office is moving in.

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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 →

Capitol Hill’s Coastal Kitchen boarded up as real estate deal apparently off the table

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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 →

Another cool old Community Roots Housing apartment building hits market but affordable developer says Capitol Hill sales are not a trend

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(Image: Community Roots Housing)

Affordable housing developer Community Roots Housing has put another of its classic Capitol Hill apartment buildings on the market but the organization says not to expect a continued selloff of its smaller-scale holdings around the central city.

“We’re not in the business of selling buildings,” a representative said about the planned sale of the Park Hill building, the 1907-era, three-story masonry apartment building at 13th and Madison.

The organization announced plans to put the 30-unit building on the market last month and began the process of working with residents to find new homes. The spokesperson said people living in affordable units can be placed elsewhere int the Community Roots “portfolio” and that the developer has gone “well beyond city requirements” in assisting those in market-rate units if they choose to move out. Continue reading →

The Fredonia: Sale means new life for 115-year-old Capitol Hill apartment building with proceeds helping to create ‘hundreds of affordable units’ in Seattle

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(Image: Community Roots Housing)

Affordable housing provider and developer Community Roots Housing has sold the 115-year-old, three-story, 12-unit Fredonia building bringing more change to the built environment along Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E and illustrating there remains a strong market for even the Hill’s oldest and smallest apartment buildings.

It is a free market — the buyer won’t be an affordable property manager or a Public Development Authority. It won’t be the city’s newly formed but not yet operational Seattle Social Housing developer. According to King County property records, the buyer is real estate investor Bryan Syrdal and Tributary Investments, a company that purchases and develops mixed-use properties with market-rate rents. The price for the Fredonia? $5 million.

Tributary has not responded to CHS inquiries but a spokesperson for Community Roots said the sale makes sense for the organization to move on from a historic building with only a handful of units and “a lot of capital needs.” The proceeds from the sale will help Community Roots provide “hundreds of affordable units” elsewhere in the city, the spokesperson said.

UPDATE: Syrdal tells CHS he is looking forward to renovating the building.

“I own and have renovated a number of older properties and used to sit on the Ballard Landmark’s board,” Syrdal writes. “My partners at Meriwether Partners have renovated and own projects of a similar profile.”

Continue reading →

Developer behind big Seattle Old Spaghetti Factory project buys little Capitol Hill office building property

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The Auto Accessories building lurks in red

A developer known for some ambitious Seattle projects including the transformation of the city’s auto row-era Old Spaghetti Factory warehouse into a commercial and residential project is now the proud owner a 1969-built Capitol Hill office building.

Meriwether Partners could be interested in the office space at 13th and Pine but it is also possible that the developer creating the Ainsworth & Dunn renovation and new construction project down toward Elliott Bay has larger plans for the 7,600-foot Capitol Hill property formerly home to a real estate office.

The $3.8 million price tag might be an indication. Continue reading →