September 26, 2016

Fana Group has plans for 48-story tower downtown

Image by Weber Thompson [enlarge]

The tower would be at Eighth and Pine, near the convention center.

The Fana Group of Companies is reintroducing plans for a hotel and residential tower at Eighth Avenue and Pine Street in downtown Seattle.

The city granted a master use permit for a similar project at that location in 2008 but it expired in 2013.

The new proposal is for a 48-story tower with 395 residential units, 178 hotel rooms and 8,000 square feet of street-level retail. Underground parking for 375 vehicles is also proposed.

The architect is Weber Thompson. The firm also designed the older proposal.

The city is tentatively scheduled to hold its first early design guidance meeting for the project at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 1 at Seattle City Hall, Room L280.

Blaine Weber of Weber Thompson said the new design will be “substantially different” from the old one.

When the Fana Group first proposed the project in 2007, the Bellevue-based developer planned to build a 39-story hotel and condo tower called the Ava Hotel and Residences.

Executive Group Development of Vancouver, B.C., was a partner in the project, and planned to operate what was to be a 190-room hotel. Executive Group has since sold its share in the development to Fana Group, and will not be involved with the new proposal.

And while the earlier plans called for 213 condos, all the residential units would be apartments under the new proposal.

A representative from Fana Group was not immediately available to discuss the company's plans.

Most of the site is now a parking lot. A vacant former Camlin Hotel building would be demolished.

The surrounding area has changed quite a bit since the developers first proposed the tower.

The Olivian, a 27-story apartment tower just north of the Fana Group site, was built in 2008. The next-door Ninth and Pine apartments were completed in 2014, and the 40-story Premiere on Pine apartment tower, across the street from the Fana Group site, also opened in 2014.

A Washington State Convention Center expansion also promises to bring big changes to the neighborhood.

Weber said the project will be designed to be responsive “to the changed conditions in the vicinity of the site.”

He rejected the idea that the new project is picking up where the old one left off.

“Not sure if you could call it a post-recession reboot,” he said, “but the Great Recession certainly did delay the initial project.”