April 15, 2022

Cedars corner in U District to join student housing plan

Photo by Cedars restaurant [enlarge]

The little restaurant opened in 1975, and won’t likely return to the planned new building.

Core Spaces and partner Fields Holdings already have big plans for the north end of a University District block. Now they're intending to add a second student-housing building to the project. It would replace the Cedars restaurant, at 4759 Brooklyn Ave. N.E. , a neighborhood institution since 1975.

GGLO is already designing the separate 23-story tower to replace the neighboring Walgreens (west across the alley), and it also filed the new seven-story plan. The number of units isn't yet specified. The plan carries a nominal value of $25 million.

One level of underground parking is indicated, with 25 stalls. That, it appears, will connect to a one-level underground parking garage immediately to the south (now surface parking).

Under GGLO's plan, the existing south lot will become public open space — a park on top of the garage. That and the Cedars corner form the east component of the overall plan.

The tower at 1205 N.E. 50th St. will take the address of the Walgreens, which closed well over a year ago. That's a 208-unit project, but the number of beds in presumably shared suites will be significantly higher than the nominal unit count. Beds, not units, is the standard metric in student housing.

That tower plan includes a possible 20 underground parking stalls and some 10,640 square feet of retail/commercial space. It hasn't yet entered design review. The east park on Brooklyn will also require design review.

Fields acquired the Walgreens and its parking lot in December for $13 million, then in February sold it to a new Core Spaces entity for $16.5 million. Fields may well retain a stake in the new ownership LLC.

Those same two parties are very active in the U District. Fields developed the nearby student housing tower The M; the 180 units over a new Safeway that are now under construction; and a prior midrise apartment project on that same stretch of Brooklyn.

And Core Spaces is behind the nearby 25-story, 211-unit oLiv Seattle, with about 576 beds. That, nearing completion north of the Graduate hotel (aka the former Hotel Deca), is now owned by a Goldman Sachs LLC — with Core likely still a partner.

The Cedars corner, with 4,167 square feet, isn't publicly listed for sale. The tear-down building dates to 1940. The restaurant is owned by the Khan family, which bought the corner property in 2015 for a little over $1.5 million.

Separately, the Khans sold their First Hill location three years ago for over $5.7 million to Housing Diversity Corp., which is now building a 107-unit project there at 500 Broadway.