May 23, 2019

Fremont’s Cedar Speedster quickly attracts tenants

Image provided by Evolution Projects/Joshua Nieves [enlarge]

The building’s unusual name is a nod to a local boat builder who crafted cedar rowing shells for UW.

Cedar Speedster, a 30,000-square-foot heavy timber retail-office building at 401 N. 36th St. in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, is expected to be complete in July, according to a press release from the owners.

The three-story project is owned by Revelution LLC, a partnership between Evolution Projects, Hess Callahan Partners and Mark Grey.

The building is almost fully leased. The retail tenants are the Revel and Local Tide restaurants and the Aslan Brewing taproom, which are expected to open by late fall.

Seattle-based retailer Evo and Evolution Projects will have their headquarters in 21,000 square feet of office space in the building.

Cedar Speedster will be the first brick-and-mortar location for Local Tide, which Victor Steinbrueck, grandson of Seattle civic leader and architect Victor Steinbrueck, has operated as a seafood pop-up at Pike Place Market. It will share a window with Aslan that allows seafood and beer to pass between the uses. Steinbrueck's brother, Aleph Geddis, a Northwest artist and wood carver, will assist with interior design, the building owners said.

They said the cedar-clad building's name is a nod to the neighborhood's role in the region's timber industry and to George Pocock, a local boat builder whose handcrafted cedar rowing shells were nicknamed Cedar Speedsters among University of Washington crews. The building's interior will have exposed wood ceilings and heavy timber framing.

Tracy Cornell of JSH and Laura Miller of Gibraltar are the retail leasing agents. Remaining to be leased is an approximately 2,000-square-foot first-floor retail/office space with a terrace.

Weber Thompson is the architect and landscape architect for the project, and the interior designer for Revel's space.

The Cedar Speedster team also includes Turner Construction, general contractor; DCI Engineers, structural engineer; and KPFF Consulting Engineers, civil engineer.

Rob Hutchison Architecture is designing the Evo office build-out, and Heliotrope will design the Aslan and Local Tide spaces.

Cedar Speedster's core and shell construction will be complete in July, the owners said. The tenant improvements will be finished in fall.