Condos springing up near Pike Place Market

Amid the tourists taking pictures of fish throwers at Pike Place Market, Mary Richardson loaded up a wheeled cart with fresh produce.

This is part of an occasional series on life at Pike Place Market in celebration of its centennial. For more P-I stories, photos and slideshows depicting the market, visit:
100 YEARS AT PIKE PLACE

"I do a lot of my shopping here, unless I need to buy a lot of really heavy canned goods," Richardson, 63, said while shopping at the Market earlier this month with her grandson. "I like the really fresh food."

The Market is a major reason why Richardson lives where she does -- in a condo three blocks away -- and a major reason for plans for more than half a dozen condo and hotel towers in the surrounding few blocks.

"It's a big factor," said Andy Taber, senior real estate director for Opus NWR Development, which is building the Fifteen Twenty-One Second Avenue condo tower a half-block away. "I'm sure it's been a big contributor to all our sales."

Plans for upscale condo projects such as Fifteen Twenty-One and the nearby Four Seasons Hotel and Residences surprised some longtime Seattle residents, who knew the Market area for strip clubs, drug dealing, parking lots, rundown buildings and scruffy businesses. But it also has advantages, including water views and proximity to the Seattle Art Museum, Benaroya Hall, shopping and restaurants.

"The Market ranks really high among those," Taber said.

Other developers agreed that the nearby Market increased the value of their condos.

But it's hard to say just how much more people will pay to be near the Market, said Warren Ballard, vice president of Seattle-based Williams Marketing, which is working with developers of many downtown buildings, including the planned 2nd & Pike condo tower near the Market

"Could it be $25 a foot? Yeah, probably pretty easily," he said. That's at least $25 a square foot, which adds up to an extra $40,000 on a 1,600-square-foot condo.

People like living near a landmark, Ballard said. "It gives the buyers certain bragging rights with their friends."

Greg Smith, chief executive of Urban Visions, a Seattle development company with several projects in the area, said he looked at Market proximity the way some consider waterfront property.

The Market is a convenient shopping and cultural center, and an icon, Smith said.

		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	The new Four Seasons Hotel and Residences is taking shape just a block from Pike Place Market.

"I was in Europe and I said I was from Seattle, and they said, 'Are those guys still throwing fish there?' "

Taber noted that Fifteen Twenty-One benefits from the Market's low building, which ensures that a new building won't spring up and block the condos' views of Elliott Bay.

The Market and the new condos actually help each other, according to William Justen, managing director for the Samis Land Co., a partner in Fifteen Twenty-One and a future resident of the building. Justen said he fell in love with the Market in the 1970s, when he evaluated its building-repair needs and started developing buildings in the area.

"Proximity to the Market is really a very special thing, but the Market also needs support and needs help," he said. "I wanted to get some higher-priced housing close to the Market."

Justen expects new residents to support it as shoppers, as members of its board of directors and as contributors to the Market Foundation, which supports the Market's services for low-income people. That, he said, would make it an even stronger and more desirable neighbor.

Smith said the iconic Market contrasted sharply with the dinginess of the surrounding neighborhood.

But, "I think as these projects are constructed, it will just enhance the total experience for tourists, for locals, for residents and for workers," he said.

The new condos are a welcome addition, according to Market merchants such as Donnie Constantino, whose mother, Lina Fronda, owns Lina's Produce.

"I think it would help the business," he said. "I don't see it hurting."

Constantino said area residents might be more likely to buy produce than tourists, who usually take pictures, and ask questions.

Jon Daniels, who owns City Fish, does good business selling to tourists, but said he loves the new condos, which will bring residents to shop during the slower winter months.

"Every time I see another new high-rise coming in, I'm very excited," he said. "The more, the better."

The development will have a more direct effect on people like An Ngo, whose business, Myano Nails, is on the first floor of a building slated to become part of a new condo tower. Although construction will displace Ngo, at least temporarily, he's all for it.

"Downtown will look good. Clean, pretty," he said. "It'll bring a lot of people downtown."