By Meghan Hall
Retail assets throughout the Puget Sound are still attracting investors, including an antique mall in Edmonds, Wash. In a transaction that closed just before the end of 2020, the Salish Crossing shopping complex traded for $16.85 million. The buyer is affiliated with several LLC and Belmont, Calif.-based Village Properties, according to Snohomish County sales records.
The deal has been a long-time in the making. The property’s owner, Nick Echelbarger and Salish Crossing LLC, first placed the asset on the market in 2018. At the time, the property was listed for $18.8 million, based on public reports. Salish Crossing LLC originally purchased the property in 2012 for $4.5 million. Over the past eight years, the 4.28-acre shopping center has been repositioned and revamped. Major tenants include the Cascadia Art Museum, Epulo Bistro, Spud’s Fish and Ships, among others.
Located at 190 Sunset, the property is situated at the intersection of Dayton Street, Edmonds Bowl and State Route 104—considered a major arterial and gateway into downtown Edmonds. Both the Edmonds March and Edmonds City Park are nearby, as is the Puget Sound and Edmonds-Kingston Ferry.
Demographics in the area are also strong for retail. Around 5,000 employees are located within half a mile of the property, and more than 60,000 people live within a three-mile radius. The average household income for those in the surrounding area are more than $100,000 per year, according to a leasing brochure released by brokerage firm West Coast Commercial Realty. The area is one of the most affluent in Washington State.
At the end of the third quarter, Snohomish County saw a retail direct vacancy rate of about 2.77 percent—below the regional average of 2.93 percent. Suburban rents in markets like the Northend are coming in between $20 to $40 per square foot, according to Kidder Mathews. Overall, the Puget Sound retail market has fared better than many others on a national basis, but Kidder Mathews notes that the retail sector is not out of the woods yet. With continued shelter-in-place orders, rents are expected to decline between three and four percent through the beginning of 2021 before recovering. Single-tenant properties with grocery or drugstore tenants still continue to fare the best, although a number of multitenant retail sales have closed in recent months, signifying movement in the market.
