January 16, 2024

BNBuilders moving to A&D Building

Photo by Brian Miller [enlarge]

The former warehouse was converted to offices in 2019; Spaces then occupied the building.

Spaces is on its way out. And, in early 2025, BNBuilders will relocate to the landmarked A&D Building at 2815 Elliott Ave. Architect DLR Group filed a full-building tenant improvement plan last month for the former warehouse, and the builder subsequently confirmed its lease with the DJC.

BNBuilders has outgrown its old space in Belltown, says its Dan Huber. The contractor has been there for about 15 years, in about 26,000 square feet, growing from some 50 staff in the office to over 200 on any given day. Its first office was in SoDo.

The Ainsworth & Dunn Building was renovated and converted to about 32,000 square feet offices by Meriwether Partners. Back in 2019, Spaces was announced as the initial full-building tenant. Part of IWG, it's a provider of short-term and flexible office space, a sector that has been greatly impacted by the pandemic and work-from-home.

Huber says that his firm will begin revamping the interiors probably in the third quarter of this year. The anticipated move-in date is April of 2025.

“We're super excited about it,” he says. “We didn't want to leave Belltown. We wanted a cool older building. There's more parking there than where we are now.” By that he also means the giant Shorenstein garage on Elliott once occupied by all those Zulily workers' cars.

Huber continues, “We were working with Meriwether on another project, and this came up.” No brokers were involved, and Spaces was evidently eager to shed the space.

He and colleagues have toured the A&D Building with Meriwether. “And I've obviously been there back when it was the Spaghetti Factory.”

Employee-owned BNBuilders was established here in 2000, and now also has offices in California and Colorado. Its future home has a large west-facing roof deck with views to Alaskan Way and Elliott Bay. It's also a few steps from Olympic Sculpture Park. Part of the building is now co-work space with an open plan; other portions are private offices.

Next door to the A&D Building is the Here Today Brewery + Kitchen, in Meriwether's ground-up companion to the A&D Building. That 62-unit apartment building at 10 Clay St. was also designed by Weinstein AU.

The former salmon cannery warehouse was for 46 years home to the Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant, which closed in 2016. And if you're wondering, it was Walsh Construction, not BNBuilders, that did the subsequent conversion of the over-century-old brick pile.

Spaces has reportedly been coveting some master-leased properties that WeWork is looking to shed. As many employers are gradually reducing their office footprints, such flexible office providers continue to fill an important transitional role.

Spaces/IWG still has several other locations in Seattle. So losing one small building at the very north end of the waterfront, not well served by transit, hardly represents a retreat from its business model.