With multiple commercial buildings boarded up and fenced off, the curve of E Olive Way has seen better days. But investor interest remains and a deal reached quietly last year should put one key block on a new path.

CHS has learned Guntower Capital, a holding company formed by executives at two Seattle-area real estate and development firms, is in agreement to purchase the half acre or so property once home to a mix of businesses including the former In the Bowl, the departed Bus Stop bar and Coffee Messiah cafe and a sprawling dog lounge charred in a 2017 fire at the corner of E Olive Way and E Denny Way.

Financial terms of the deal have not been publicly disclosed and CHS is waiting to find out more from Guntower but a memorandum of purchase and sale agreement for the 1924-built, auto-row era structures was signed in August and filed with the county in late November by the investors and the longtime Lu family ownership that has held the property since a $1 million purchase in 1987.

The buildings haven’t stood empty since the damaging September 2017 fire but continued to slowly but surely shed tenants including the quiet closures last year of Noodle Time/In the Bowl and the exit of the vape shop chain that opened in the property replacing the Arabica Lounge in 2015.

In addition to the Beyond Vape chain, the building has been home to the Holy Smoke head shop and the long ago exited Apocalypse Tattoo.

UPDATE: A representative for the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections tells CHS the building has been part of the city’s vacant building monitoring program but the previous owners “struggled to be good stewards of the community.” The rep encouraged CHS readers to report concerns or issues with vacant properties via the SDCI services portal.

E Olive Way, meanwhile, has been suffering through some other exits including the decision by Starbucks to shutter its cafe on the street that has left that property boarded up and fenced.

Now completely boarded up like its former Starbucks neighbor up the Hill, a Guntower Capital plan for redeveloping the land is surely in the works at E Olive Way and Denny.

Any development will have company. CHS reported here on the plans on the south side of E Olive Way replacing the former Coldwell Banker building and three others with a seven-story mixed-use project from Canada-based real estate investment and management company Low Tide Properties. That project is part of a ripple of redevelopment and real estate activity along the curves of E Olive Way. CHS reported here on the plans for a new eight-story mixed use project being readied for the All Season Cleaners property just below Broadway. And a new eight-story, mass timber City Market building is also in the works. Meanwhile, the stretch is one of the few in the city where local, state, and federal restrictions allow retail marijuana permits and investment from the industry including The Reef building across the street has followed.

Formed in 2017, Guntower Capital includes Jonathan Slavin of Newmark Realty Capital, and Chris Langer and Joseph Razore of the Broderick Group, according to state filings.

It is currently pursuing a 102-unit mixed-use development in downtown Bellevue and developing a 24-story, 237-unit apartment building in the University District.

Other executives include Charlie Bauman, a principal at barrientos RYAN, “a unique urban real estate development firm focused on making places” that has been active in Capitol Hill development.

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