October 2, 2025

Near Seattle Center, MUP arrives for monorail-facing hotel

Rendering by Weber Thompson [enlarge]

Guests will have views of the Space Needle above, and the monorail below.

One of the post-pandemic bright spots in our local economy is the resurgence of tourism. The hospitality sector is doing fairly well, especially compared to the office market. Yet in the broader downtown area, very few hotel projects have dared to break ground since COVID-19 struck.

One exception is brewing at 508 Denny Way, a little southeast of Seattle Center. There, the mostly vacant Fat City garage building still stands, with the monorail still passing over its roof.

The master use permit came last week for the 15-story, 171-room hotel proposed by Da Li Properties and architect Weber Thompson. The latest plans also tip the builder, GenCap Construction, and hotel operator: Columbia Hospitality.

The garage closed years ago, prior to the 2017 land sale. (Da Li bought it six years later from a would-be developer.) The immigration law office still looks to be open. The building is not fenced for demo.

On its corner site, at Fifth Avenue North, the hotel will be pushed back east, with the monorail running above a public plaza. The lobby level and top floor would both have restaurants and bars. The top level will also have terraces with views west to the Space Needle and Elliott Bay.

No parking is planned, but there will be a drop-off area on Fifth for guests arriving by cab or Uber. Toss in the manager's unit, amenities and back-of-house areas (including the basement), and the total project size is around 114,535 square feet, with a Mandatory Housing Affordability fee of around $1.1 million.

The project team now also includes Transpo Group, traffic consultant; Forrest Perkins, interiors; Site Workshop, landscape architect; Resonance (of Vancouver, B.C.), branding; Sledge Seattle, demolition; Terrane, surveyor; PanGeo, geotechnical; Ground Support, shoring; DCI Engineers; structural; Navix Engineering, civil; Counterbalance Consulting Group, Seattle City Light coordinator; Coffman Engineers, smoke control; Avanti Restaurant Solutions, kitchen; Emerald Aire, mechanical design/build; J.H. Kelley, plumbing design/build; A3 Acoustics; FS2, elevators; McKinstry, fire protection; Walker Consulting, envelope; American Trash Management; and Delta E, energy consultant.

Construction is to be standard Type I-A concrete and steel. No start date has been announced, and there's no hotel brand obviously attached to the project.

What about the competition? This spring saw the openings of the Populus, in Pioneer Square, and a Residence Inn at Northgate Station. (As second hotel is also planned at that station.) Hotel plans still seem to be on hold at Yesler Terrace and near the Providence/Swedish campus on Cherry Hill. The very contested proposal next to Pike Place Market, on First Avenue, is still in a years-long Hearing Examiner process. Hotel plans in Belltown and the central business district have been offered for sale, but with no bites. And a possible hotel conversion of the Grand Central Block, in Pioneer Square, would take years to realize.

And demand? Using STR figures, Visit Seattle and the Downtown Seattle Association say it surpasses pre-pandemic booking rates. That figure varies with the month and the season — higher in summer, etc.

For the region, Kidder Mathews' mid-year hotel report said we were averaging about 70% occupancy for the prior 12 months. That figure includes hotels well beyond the downtown core, where occupancy is higher. In general terms, Kidder sees “continued improvement over prior years since the start of the pandemic in 2020.”

It forecasts, “With continued growth in demand and a relatively stable supply plus rising room rates, we expect that hotel performance will continue to steadily improve, although at a slower rate than in the past three years.”

Kidder mentions the Somm, which opened this past weekend in Woodinville, and a LivAway Suites, soon to open in Renton. The only in-city hotel due to open in coming months, northwest of Seattle Center, is an Element by Westin, with about 250 rooms.