(Image: Coldwell Banker Bain Capitol Hill)
An architectural rendering of the planned new home for Coldwell Banker Bain Capitol Hill
The revival of the building at the top of Pike/Pine where 14th Ave meets Pike and Madison will turn the former auto row-era grocery into a new neighborhood headquarters in an industry that knows more about the value of Capitol Hill land — and how it is changing — than anybody.
Todd Shively, principal managing broker of Coldwell Banker Bain Capitol Hill, said change and development typically follows his firm’s moves over the years as real estate professionals push and pull the boundaries of the neighborhood.
With plans for opening in the first quarter of the new year, Coldwell Banker Bain is redeveloping the 1909-built auto row-era building at 1400 E Pike into a new two-level office on the edge of Pike/Pine.
The tides of redevelopment and change also hit real estate pros. In spring of 2019, CHS reported on a massive $21 million real estate deal that put half an acre of Capitol Hill commercial property along E Olive Way under the control of Vancouver, Canada-based real estate investment and management company Low Tide Properties. It may not have been the most well-time buy given what came a year later. Meanwhile, CBB Capitol Hill found itself on the hunt for a new home base.
The 1400 E Pike property, an asset it acquired in 2015 for $1.8 million from long-time family ownership, fit the bill.
Situated on the southern edge of 14th Ave’s First African Methodist Episcopal Church campus and massive parking lot, the two-story building had been empty since arts venue nomad Love City Love pulled out of the space in 2019. Previously, the building was home to the prosthetics sales company Artificial Limb Co. and the Electric Tea Garden, a Capitol Hill hangout and nightlife venue that straddled the line between nightclub and underground club. Long ago around 1916, Jacob A. Stavik Grocery called it home.
After pandemic-delayed permits and construction are wrapped up, it will become home to new life in early 2022. CHS reported here on the plans for the new Otherworld Wine Bar to become resident on the east side of the building. Its landlord and neighbor will be CBB Capitol Hill with two levels of new space for office work, conferences, and gatherings.
Shively said the plans for the new office have been shaped by both the realities of a more mobile work environment of the pandemic and the traditional needs of real estate like sitting down at a big together to hash things out and sign page after page for sales and lease agreements.
The new CBB space will be a comfortable mix of work and life resources for agents including amenities like a kitchen and shower. The neighboring wine bar will, of course, also be a major asset. But real estate pros know as well as anybody not to get too comfortable and that everything — especially in a popular commercial market like Capitol Hill — is for sale.
If the past is any indication, Shively said, this building will have a new future sometime in the next decade.
Change is already happening all around. Across Madison, CC Attle’s marked its final days in 2010 before moving to E Olive Way to make way for the super green Bullitt Center. The six-story Chloe on Madison building covers the block where Piecora’s used to stand. Just up the sidewalk from 1400 E Pike, the Broadcast Apartments now rise. Eventually, more development is likely to come around the neighboring land and parking lot owned by the First African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Meanwhile, the tides of change and development have also added a third tenant to the plans for 1400 E Pike when construction wraps up this winter. It’s unknown what corner in the area is next for a major redevelopment but a major contractor has leased the small 14th Ave-side suite of the building for its offices during a major, apparently yet to be announced project in the area.
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