(Image: Community Roots Housing)

Affordable housing provider and developer Community Roots Housing has sold the 115-year-old, three-story, 12-unit Fredonia building bringing more change to the built environment along Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E and illustrating there remains a strong market for even the Hill’s oldest and smallest apartment buildings.

It is a free market — the buyer won’t be an affordable property manager or a Public Development Authority. It won’t be the city’s newly formed but not yet operational Seattle Social Housing developer. According to King County property records, the buyer is real estate investor Bryan Syrdal and Tributary Investments, a company that purchases and develops mixed-use properties with market-rate rents. The price for the Fredonia? $5 million.

Tributary has not responded to CHS inquiries but a spokesperson for Community Roots said the sale makes sense for the organization to move on from a historic building with only a handful of units and “a lot of capital needs.” The proceeds from the sale will help Community Roots provide “hundreds of affordable units” elsewhere in the city, the spokesperson said.

UPDATE: Syrdal tells CHS he is looking forward to renovating the building.

“I own and have renovated a number of older properties and used to sit on the Ballard Landmark’s board,” Syrdal writes. “My partners at Meriwether Partners have renovated and own projects of a similar profile.”

The plan for the Fredonia, Syrdal said, will be in the spirit of its 1908-era construction.

“While Fredonia has been modified too many times over the years to be a true historic renovation, it is our initial intent to renovate to the original period with a contemporary look in finishes,” Syrdal said.

CHS reported here in May about the building hitting the market and the Notice of Intent to Sell process is intended to give the city, the Seattle Housing Authority, and community partners notification and information “to evaluate properties and deploy a range of property preservation tools, including incentives and acquisition.”

With a market-rate developer that intends to preserve the old building winning the bid, Community Roots said it worked with its affordable housing tenants to relocate the Fredonia residents to new buildings. Three market-rate tenants have the option to remain in the building.

Another “market-rate” tenant also remains at street level. Work on a new restaurant on the ground floor of the Fredonia have been going — off and on — for more than a year as a Seattle family of restaurant veterans reshapes the old Canterbury into a home for Restaurant Meliora, planned as a modern European restaurant. CHS reported here in May 2022 on the project part of the Rasai restaurant family, the Fremont “progressive Indian” joint that celebrated a grand opening in spring 2021 on N 36th St. under longtime Seattle restaurant veteran Sykh Singh. There is no opening date yet announced for Meliora but the restaurant has been hiring and is now promising a “summer 2023” opening and the sale reportedly won’t scuttle the opening.

Across the street from the Fredonia, meanwhile, the project to build a new mixed-use building on the property once home to the Hilltop Service Station finally broke ground late last year. CHS first reported on those plans in January 2019. The building from Capitol Hill developer and property manager Hunters Capital is slated to complete construction next year.

The Fredonia deal also comes as plans for another block of 15th Ave E to eventually be demolished and rebuilt as five stories of mixed-use housing. CHS reported here in May on plans from Hunters Capital to begin the multi-year redevelopment process that will stretch from E Republican south and replace the buildings currently home to ShopRite, Rudy’s, the now empty QFC, and a handful of residential apartments with a new 150-unit apartment building. That building, too, will feature predominantly market-rate units.

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