February 2, 2026

New owner mulls 93-unit residential conversion for Fourth & Pike offices

Photo by Brian Miller [enlarge]

The handsome tower is distinguished by its ornate, Gothic-style terra cotta cladding.

The landmarked, century-old Fourth & Pike Building, at 1424 Fourth Ave., is also known as the Liggett Building and, more recently, 4Pike. The handsome 10-story office tower, with retail at its base, is distinguished by its ornate, Gothic-style terra cotta cladding. Many now associate it with Arc'teryx, which moved from across the street to occupy the former Ben Bridge space.

First Citizens Bank & Trust owns 1424 Fourth, having taken the keys last March from LBA Realty. It was in the late fall of 2019, pre-pandemic, when LBA paid $58 million for the roughly 102,044-square-foot building. It borrowed $47 million for the purchase from First Citizens, now part of CIT Group.

Last week came a new plan from Graham Baba Architects and owner of record CRE Holdings Sub 2 LLC to convert the upper floors to 93 apartments. The existing two-level basement could have 31 parking stalls. Also listed in the proposal is an entity called Current Dev, which shares a Capitol Hill address with Dunn & Hobbes. That firm has often worked with Graham Baba in the past.

Few office buildings convert easily to residential use. The floor plates in postwar buildings don't work, being too large, with too few windows to allow light and fresh air to penetrate their inner reaches. But like others from the pre-air conditioning era, 1424 Fourth has a large airshaft within its relatively compact U-shaped footprint. That faces east to an alley.

Photo via JLL [enlarge]

Local architects Lawton & Moldenhour designed the tower, completed in 1927. Conversion would require Landmarks board approval.

Because 1424 Fourth is landmarked (and on the National Register of Historic Places), the conversion scheme would require approval from the city Landmarks Preservation Board. No such meeting has been scheduled yet.

Liggett's drugstore once occupied the retail corner on Pike. Bigelow was the developer, Murdock & Eckman the builder and Lawton & Moldenhour the architect. Liggett, a national chain that also operated Rexall, also had offices upstairs.

WCCR represents two vacant retail bays, with about 5,443 square feet. JLL is the office broker, with many vacancies on the upper levels. Starting on the third level, where the light shaft begins, the floor plates average about 10,740 square feet. Perhaps helpfully, 1424 Fourth has all its elevators and stairs on the south side — side core before side core, in other words.

On the residential conversion front, some owners of older Class B downtown office buildings have pitched complicated mass-timber additions. More similar to the whole-building, as-is plan for 1424 Fourth is a 155-unit scheme at the Joseph Vance Building, on Third Avenue. That notion, from architect Weinstein AU and Orton Development, has been quiet for the past few years.

Project financing on Fourth could be easier than on Third, particularly for a bank like First Citizens.