September 4, 2019

Urban Visions sells the vacant downtown building for $5M

Photo by Brian Miller [enlarge]

The Winter Garden was developed in 1920 as a movie theater, and has been vacant since 2016.

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The vacant former Aaron Brothers store, at 1513 Third Ave. downtown, has sold for $5 million, according to King County records. The seller, via an LLC, was Greg Smith's Urban Visions, which acquired the property in 2015 for $4 million.

The buyer was 1513 3rd Ave LLC, associated with Plus Investment of Bellevue, which last year paid Urban Visions $32.5 million for the nearby old Chromer Building, at 1516 Second Ave. On that site, Plus is planning two condominium towers with 45 and 17 stories (the so-called “Mama” and “Baby”).

No new plans have been filed for the Third Avenue property. It's directly east across the alley from 1516 Second, making it ideal for construction staging or offices and — possibly — some kind of third related tower.

Smith said it was a direct sale, with no brokers involved. The deal was worth about $771 per square foot for the land, which is zoned up to 170 feet. However, because it's very close to the transit tunnel and relatively small, at 6,480 square feet, it's also constrained.

When Smith floated a plan to redevelop the site with apartments over retail three years ago, he told the DJC, “It's challenging. It's a small site.”

It's tucked between two taller buildings on a stretch of Third between Pike and Pine streets. Smith never took the feasibility plan, by Olson Kundig, into design review.

Developed in 1920 as the Winter Garden movie theater, the venue later operated under different names, finally ending up as a porn house before closing in 1979. It was gutted that same year (after prior remodels), and later housed several retail businesses. The Aaron Brothers framing and art-supply shop closed in mid-2016; the building has been vacant ever since.

The building now has about 6,000 square feet of rentable space, plus a reported 2,160-square-foot mezzanine level and a basement.

Plus has capital to invest. Last year it sold a majority interest in what had been called Elev8 in Bellevue for $128 million to Stanford Hotels, which has now rebranded the planned mixed-use high-rise project as Cloudvue.

For Plus, Hewitt is designing the condominium towers at 1516 Second, which are still in design review. Walsh Group announced last month that it would be the general contractor. No permits have yet been issued. The current numbers are 524 condos, 6,500 square feet of retail and 310 underground parking stalls.

Plus also goes by Pinnacle Plus Development and Plus Capital Partners. The firms are led by George Liu. Plus shares an address and executives with American Bridge EB-5, but Plus says it is not an EB-5 developer.

(Editor's note: The story has been corrected to say that Plus Investment says it is not an EB-5 developer.)