Today in Metaphors, Iconic Seattle Tower’s Foreclosure Auction Set for Spring

Smith Tower (Photo: MvB)

“Smith Tower opened in 1914, boasting 540 offices to be filled with L. C. Smith office equipment and a height of 522 feet, which made it the fourth tallest building in the world. For almost 50 years, it would remain the tallest building west of the Mississippi.” On July 3, 2014, it will celebrate its centennial, but in whose hands, we will all have to wait until March 23 to find out. That’s the date that Seattle’s first skyscraper is “slated to be sold at a foreclosure auction March 23 outside the King County Administration Building,” reports the Seattle Times‘ Eric Pryne.

It’s not an auction, really, for just anyone to participate in. Previous owners Walton Street Capital, based in Chicago, had bubble-burst dreams of increasing square-footage revenue by converting the tower’s small office spaces into condos, but after shepherding the existing tenants out the door, they watched the luxury condo market slump catastrophically. They owed over $40 million, and couldn’t meet operating expenses with a vacancy rate around 70 percent.

Enter CBRE Capital Markets, which bought the troubled mortgage for something less than, it’s presumed, the $43 million that Walton Street Capital owed. (Smith Tower, says Pryne, is now assessed at $21.3 million.) If you’d like to own Smith Tower, you will likely need to present a cashier’s check for an amount in excess of their position, or they will, as a Times commenter suggested, take over the property and seek the highest value for use–perhaps historic apartments. (The penthouse pyramid has previously been for lease.)

The Smith Tower’s saga provides an interesting insight into the sustainability of Seattle commercial office space market. Colliers International says that Seattle “continued to show signs of stabilization through Q4 2011,” with the vacancy rate declining slightly to 15.84 from 16.61 percent. Admittedly, says Colliers, that year-to-date net absorption rate of positive 1,177,000 square feet owes much to Amazon.com taking up over 1,000,000 square feet over the past year and a half. (Cue backlash: See Geekwire’s story on “Am-holes.”) Colliers anticipates Amazon will absorb more than 500,000 square feet of office space over the next few years, 326,000 alone at the Phase V Building on their South Lake Union campus, set for early 2013.

“Although some might be cautious about a single tenant accounting for the majority of growth over the past two years, Amazon.com is rated the #1 online retailer in the country,” notes Colliers, “and isn’t expected to be leaving the Seattle market in the foreseeable future.”

Worrying about the outsized impact of nation-leading businesses on office space is one of those “problems” other cities would love to have, of course. But it’s hard to miss the contrast with the Smith Tower sitting nearly vacant. As developer Ted Schroth found with Capitol Hill’s historic Odd Fellows Hall, it’s not easy to lure smaller firms into “market-rate rents” post-renovation. If developers determine office-to-apartment conversion provides the better return for these older buildings, how long before small businesses are forced to go big or stay home?