By Jack Stubbs
On Wednesday, September 26th, a retail building in the heart of downtown Seattle sold for $19 million, or approximately $693 per square foot, according to public records filed with King County. The buyer was Arzco 1 Investment Corp., a Washington corporation. The seller was Faramarzi Investments LLC, an entity affiliated with Ira and Peador Faramarzi based in Los Angeles.
Kidder Mathews, who represented the seller, did not respond to calls for comment about the transaction in time for the publishing of this story.
The recently-sold property was the three-story Yukon Building located at 1518 Fifth Ave. in Seattle’s Central Business District, which totals 27,400 square feet, according to public documents. According to a property flyer written by JSH Properties—who represented the seller on the leasing side before they chose to sell the building—the Yukon retail opportunity for a single-tenant user is 12,800 square feet over three floors. The space can be potentially demised to 6,400 square feet with a proposed elevator serving all of the floors.
JSH Properties did not respond to requests for more information about the property.
The asset—which was built in 1903, according to public documents—occupies a prominent location on 5th Avenue adjacent to Westlake Park and the Westlake Light Rail Station. Some of the other retail tenants along 5th Avenue include GAP, Banana Republic, Urban Outfitters and Nordstrom.
The location has a walking score of 98 and a transit score of 100, according to JSH’s property flyer. The asset is one of Seattle’s prime shopping corridors, with Pine street retail to the North and Pike Street to the South. The two streets host 7,000 pedestrians an hour and Pike Place Market, which is just four blocks to the west, draws in 10 million visitors annually and between 20,000 and 40,000 visitors daily.
The subject property sits in the middle of the Pike/Pine corridor, which is set for changes in the coming months. In a project named the Pike Pine Renaissance: Act One, the city of Seattle’s Office of the Waterfront has teamed up with the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) to redesign and improve the pedestrian experience along Pike and Pine streets, as well as connect the corridor to the waterfront and the nearby Pike Place Market to Capitol Hill. The project, which began in 2013 as part of DSA’s Pike Pine Renaissance Streetscape Design Vision, is part of the larger Waterfront Seattle Program.
The waterfront along Elliott Bay is set for large-scale future changes as a result of Waterfront Seattle’s $688 million redevelopment project, which spans from Pioneer Square to Belltown and will follow the removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct in early 2019. The waterfront Seattle redevelopment—which includes a number of different projects—comprises 20 acres of new and improved public space, improved pedestrian and vehicular connections between Elliott Bay and surrounding neighborhoods; renovated utility infrastructure and new surface streets along Alaskan Way and Elliott Way.
The program, with a potential completion date around first quarter of 2023, also includes the rebuild of the Marion Street Bridge; the construction of Overlook Walk, a public pathway connecting the waterfront to Pike Place market; an expansion of the Seattle Aquarium; the restoration and reinstallation of the historic Washington Street Boat Landing (WSBL) Pergola; and the Seawall Project, a replacement and renovation of the aging seawall along the waterfront.
