August 21, 2020

Former Rockets owner on First Hill tower team

Rendering by Preston Partnership [enlarge]

1300 Spring’s nearest high-rise neighbors would be the 24-story Luma and 33-story First Hill Plaza.

The land hasn't sold yet, but more details are emerging for the planned 25-story, 352-unit First Hill apartment tower at 1300 Spring St. The project, with a nominal value of $80 million, will have its first administrative design review on Wednesday.

Preston Partnership of Atlanta will design the high rise, working with local firm Jackson Main Architecture. Raftery Suver is the local owner's rep, working in concert with Adelaide Real Estate of Houston, where fee developer Xenos Properties is also based.

Also on the team are Decker and Associates, civil engineer; McCullough Hill Leary, attorney; and Karen Kiest Landscape Architects. The prospective buyer is Xenia Development LLC, which lists a Houston attorney's office as its address.

The proposal, which the DJC first reported in January, also includes about 3,000 square feet of retail/commercial space facing Summit Avenue. Tenants would enter on Spring. About 13 underground parking stalls and 301 bike stalls are planned.

The top two floors would all be amenity space, with terraces on the 25th floor. Total project size, including the parking, is estimated at 269,811 square feet, with a height of 273 feet.

Preston's preferred design is dubbed “nested boxes,” with rectangular insets or “accent carves” to break up the facade. The lower four floors, or plinth, would have conventional masonry cladding in a nod to older First Hill apartment buildings.

The tower would be Preston's first project in Seattle; it has ample experience with high rises. The 14,400-square-foot corner, at Summit, is being offered for $16 million by Blair Savidge of Savidge Investment Real Estate. It's long been owned by a local family group. A small, old medical office building will eventually be removed.

Savidge says he expects the land sale to close in the middle of next month.

Prospective buyer Xenia is managed by a South Florida asset manager, CEAS Investments, for Tara Louisiana Group. That's an investment vehicle for billionaire Leslie L. Alexander, a former bond trader turned investor who's now based in Delray Beach, Florida. He once owned and later sold — for $2.2 billion — the Houston Rockets. A former executive with that team is now an officer with Xenos Properties in Houston, where Alexander previously lived until he sold the Rockets.

CEAS Investments has to date primarily been an early investor in startups and tech companies. It calls itself an “investment vehicle within a single family office with capital of a top venture firm, complete flexibility on stage and check size, and a very aggressive risk appetite.”

Federal election and securities filings also link Alexander to CEAS and its offices.

Adelaide and Preston are also working with Xenia on a 16-story apartment plan in Denver; that land hasn't sold yet either.