May 17, 2019

Toll Bros. buys Belltown tower site for $25M

Rendering by Studio19 Architects, CallisonRTKL [enlarge]

The tower would have 285 units, retail and underground parking.

Toll Brothers is entering the downtown Seattle market with a splash, having just purchased a high-rise development site 2302 Fourth Ave. in Belltown for just under $24.8 million. King County recorded the sale on Thursday.

The seller was TeamRise Bell Tower LLC, which acquired the 19,440-square-foot corner site in 2014 for about $20 million. TeamRise received its master use permit last month for a 25-story apartment building with 285 units, retail and underground parking for 179 vehicles.

Brokers were not announced. The deal was worth about $1,276 per square foot for the land.

National homebuilder Toll mostly does single-family suburban residential development, plus some mid-rise multifamily projects. The Belltown purchase appears to be its first downtown venture on the West Coast. The DJC was unable to reach Toll before deadline.

The architect of record for 2302 Fourth is Studio19 Architects. The design architect is CallisonRTKL.

The design will incorporate the facade of the landmarked three-story Franklin Apartments, at 2302 Fourth, on the corner of Bell Street. There will be a deck on top of the Franklin, more decks and amenity areas on top of the tower, and a dramatic atrium entry extending from Fourth to the alley.

The team also includes Weisman Design Group, landscape architect; DCI Engineers, structural; Coffman Engineers, mechanical and electrical; and AHBL, civil engineer.

No application for a construction permit was ever made by TeamRise.

Publicly traded Toll is based in Horsham, Pennsylvania, and has a regional office in Kirkland. It has a current market capitalization of around $5.7 billion. In 2003, it acquired Manhattan Building Co. of Hoboken, New Jersey, which does high-rise and medium-rise projects, primarily on the East Coast. Toll's multifamily arm is Toll Brothers Apartment Living.

Pasadena-based TeamRise is the U.S. affiliate of Wuhan-based TeamRise Group, which has interests in real estate and other industries. It had originally planned condos on the Belltown corner, before the Franklin was landmarked. Last year TeamRise said it planned to raise and invest about $100 million to complete the project.