By Jack Stubbs
Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood—adjacent to the ever-active areas of Denny Triangle and South lake Union—has seen no shortage of development activity over the last several months, and another transaction recently recorded in the neighborhood.
On Thursday, March 28th, a nearly half-acre parcel which includes a 3,600 square foot restaurant property sold for $13.6 million, King County records show. The buyer was Da Li Properties LLC, an entity which shares the same address as Chainglin Law Firm in Bellevue. The seller was Kami Limited Partnership, an entity affiliated with Alexander Milkie and based on Mercer Island.
Located at 218 Fifth Ave. N., the subject parcel totals .4 acres and also includes a 3,622 square foot building—home to a McDonald’s restaurant—that was constructed in 1980, according to public documents. It is not entirely clear whether the buyer has any development plans for the recently-acquired property, and no project plans have yet been filed with the city.
Sitting at the corner of 5th Ave. N. and Thomas St., the property is directly adjacent to various Seattle attractions like The Space Needle, the Chihuly Glass Garden, Seattle Children’s Museum and Seattle Center. The property is also roughly one mile north of the city’s Central Business District.
The parcel is also just two blocks south of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s two-building campus located at 500 5th Ave. N., which is set for an expansion in the coming months. In mid-June 2018, the Foundation announced its plans for a third building in the original Belltown location, and will break ground on the new 6-story, 385,000 square foot building in Fall of 2019.
The third new boomerang-shaped building marks the latest chapter for the $500 million, 1.1 million square foot campus completed in 2011, where the foundation currently employs approximately 1,200 employees—the new building will include the opportunities for an up to an additional 800 seats for employees, as well as flexible meeting and community spaces.
Elsewhere in the city, on March 26th, LMN Architects announced the completion and opening of the new Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science and Engineering, a 135,000 square foot project at the University of Washington.
There have not been too many projects approved in Belltown in first quarter 2019, though there are various projects in the pipeline that will impact the fabric of the neighborhood in the coming months. In early September 2018, for example, Vulcan Inc.’s 44-story, 463-unit 5th and Lenora project located at 2025 5th Ave. was approved at a third Design Review meeting.
