By Jack Stubbs
Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood has experienced no shortage of activity in recent months, and a three-parcel property slated for residential redevelopment recently changed hands.
On Friday, June 15th, the Knights of Columbus property and two associated parking lots in Capitol Hill sold for $18.5 million, according to public records filed with King County. The buyer was Spokane, Washington-based SRM Development LLC, a privately-owned development and construction management company. The property was sold by the Knights of Columbus Club of Seattle, a Catholic-based fraternal organization based in New Haven, Connecticut.
The transaction was for three separate parcels. The first parcel, located at 722 E. Union St. at the corner of Harvard and Union, contains the three-story Knights of Columbus building, which was built in 1913 and totals 33,196 square feet, according to public documents. The second parcel at 1409 Harvard Ave. contains a 15,360 square foot parking lot and the third parcel, located at 706 E. Union St., contains a 2,800 square foot parking lot.
Located adjacent to the Pike/Pine corridor in Capitol Hill, the three-parcel property is approximately one mile northeast of downtown Seattle and just two blocks from Cal Anderson Park. The asset is also roughly one mile from access to Interstate-5.
SRM has plans to redevelop the three-parcel property, although at this point in time the redevelopment plans are still in their conceptual stages, according to James Rivard, managing principal at SRM. “We don’t know yet what exactly we will do with the property,” he said. “The [Knights of Columbus] building will be retained and rehabilitated into a residential or commercial use; we’re just now engaging in further studies of what we think the highest and best use is for the building and the neighborhood.” SRM plans to develop the adjacent parking lots into residential housing. The company has not yet submitted project plans to the city for review.
The 3-story property located at 722 E. Union St. is listed as a Seattle historical site on the Seattle Department of Neighborhood’s web site, and will likely be subject to landmark review.
Founded in 2001, SRM Development specializes in acquiring, developing and managing multifamily, senior housing and mixed-use developments in major cities across the Western U.S. Since its founding, the company has developed and constructed more than $1 billion of residential and commercial real estate, 3,000 units of senior and multifamily housing and over 750,000 square feet of retail, hotel and office space, according to its web site.
SRM has an extensive portfolio in the Puget Sound region and worked on developing the Google Campus in Kirkland, among other projects. Some of the company’s multifamily properties include the 211-unit Astro Apartments and the 234-unit Lyric Apartments in Seattle; the 65-unit 101 Apartments in Kirkland and the 262-unit Meyden Apartments in Bellevue.
The Knights of Columbus Seattle Council 676 has been operating in Seattle since 1902, according to the organizations’s web site, and constructed the three-story building in 1913 as its local headquarters. The organization’s purpose is to provide charitable community services based on tenets of the Catholic Church and to support the Ministry of the Catholic Church.
