August 10, 2016

Walton Lofts sells for $75.6M; that's $555,794 per apartment

Photo by Benjamin Benschneider [enlarge]

The two-year-old Walton Lofts sold Monday for $75.58 million, King County records show.

Located at 75 Vine St. (at the corner of Western Avenue), the 13-story building has 136 luxury apartments in about 92,000 square feet, plus 79 underground parking spaces. The site is near the Olympic Sculpture Park, downtown and the waterfront.

Residents share a rooftop deck and dog walk, great room, bike storage/maintenance room, fitness center, guest suite and concierge. According to the website, Walton Lofts even has a motto: Life is grand.

The seller was Western and Vine LLC, which is associated with the Seattle-based developer The Schuster Group. Its project partners included Shoesmith Cox Architects, VIA Architecture, Turner Construction and Kenneth Philp Landscape Architects — which helped create the unique green roof. The system funnels rainwater through runnels and weirs that eventually feed into Elliott Bay. For that and other green features, Walton Lofts earned a Three Globes certification from the Green Building Initiative, which is comparable to LEED gold.

The buyer was Columbia Washington Walton Lofts Residential Properties, LLC, associated with Clarion Partners and Columbia Office Properties, of New York. CBRE's Jon Hallgrimson, Frank Bosl and Eli Hanacek represented Schuster in the deal.

Because Walton Lofts has no retail space, it's easy to calculate the price per unit: $555,794. Seattle's record remains $614,300 per unit, for Holland Partner Group's 2015 sale of the 40-story apartment tower Premiere on Pine.