A 125-year old Seattle gem, The Standard Building, located at 1012 First Avenue, in Seattle’s business district core, sold last week for $15,510,000, or roughly $470 per square foot, on a blended basis. The building totals 33,000 square feet, 28,000 of which is the office component, and the remaining 5,000 square feet is retail. The seller was Seattle-based Lake Union Partners, which purchased the property in May of 2014 and invested in retrofitting and renovating the structure into a modern building that has leased all but one floor in the property.
The buyer of the property is Kula, Hawaii-based entity associated with Kaonoulu Ranch, and the Rice family that owns it.
The Standard Building is a masonry structure constructed in 1893. Lake Union Partners with contractor Coughlin Porter Lundeen and architect Weinstein A|U, fully restored and structurally retrofitted one of the oldest existing commercial buildings located along First Avenue north of Pioneer Square. The developer also added a rooftop “jewel box” penthouse office floor and deck to complement the creative office and a restaurant on the ground floor of the structure. As a result, the property today is almost fully occupied. The building’s leasing broker, The Broderick Group lists the second floor of the building, a total of 4,179 rentable square feet as the only open lease in the property. It also lists asking rents of $29 NNN. Retail leasing is led Gibraltar Investment Property Solutions.
The building offers creative office space with exposed brick and beam construction, as well as high ceilings and large operable windows, according to the property’s flyer. The retrofit that Lake Union Partners undertook included full seismic retrofit and building renovation, including the lobby and common areas. In addition, a new centralized HVAC system was added to the building, as well as mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.
The seller was represented by the Seattle office of JLL. The efforts on the transaction were led by Stuart Williams and Lori Hill, both managing directors.
