Bellevue-based Lake Washington Partners LLC, new owner of the vacant 1800 Ninth office tower in Seattle’s Denny Triangle, laid out its plan Monday for the property along with the asset’s new name, Axis9.
The company announced it will invest approximately $15 million into the 18-story building, which was built in 1990. Lake Washington Partners acquired the 321,700-square-foot tower in September through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.
In late 2019, J.P. Morgan Investment Management Inc. bought the then Amazon-leased property from Chicago-based Heitman America for $206.25 million.
Because it was a deed-in-lieu sale, the price Lake Washington Partners paid is not publicly available. However, King County assesses the property’s value at nearly $72.7 million, down from the peak of $186.6 million in 2021.
Lake Washington Partners plans to “transform” the building’s amenity suite, by adding a full-service ground-floor restaurant, concierge staff, and coworking and open seating on the fourth floor, per the announcement. Upgrades to the fitness center, conference rooms and the outdoor patio are scheduled to be completed next spring.
In addition, Lake Washington Partners said it’s investing in spec suites starting at 7,500 square feet. These will allow potential tenants “to move in quickly and commence business operations expeditiously,” the release said.
JPC Architects is the designer, with “no official general contractor to announce at this time,” a Lake Washington Partners spokesperson said.
Geoff Pendergast, Rick Hart and Joe Connor of Colliers will market the space for lease. Asking rental rates were not immediately available.
In Seattle, Lake Washington Partners is the latest hometown company to invest in empty, or near-empty, older office space and upgrade it. The most prominent example is Smith Tower, which is filling up with tenants.
“We believe in Seattle,” Lake Washington Partners President Jordan Lott said in the news release.
He added he is seeing “the early stages of a renaissance in downtown office demand and occupancy,” and cited Amazon’s return to full-time in-office work and Starbucks “encouraging something similar.”
Lott said he believes other Seattle employers will follow suit, “and this positive trend toward the resurgence of downtown will continue to grow.
“Office space carries a tremendous value for both large-and-small-scale companies, and I couldn’t be happier that we are breathing new life into a key building in downtown Seattle where my grandfather’s real estate legacy began,” he added.
In the Denny Triangle, Wright Runstad & Co. developed 1800 Ninth as a build-to-suit headquarters for Regence BlueShield. The building underwent a nearly $40 million renovation in 2013. Amazon moved into roughly 209,000 square feet at the time but did not renew the lease which expired in February.
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