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For Sale: 13 contiguous acres downtown Seattle

georgegeorge
edited April 2008 in Seattle Real Estate
Anyone looking for 13 acres downtown? Nows your chance.
Now, after patiently accumulating 13 contiguous acres downtown and shunning investors who wanted well-placed pieces of it, the family is putting the land on the market.

The smart money knows what a peak looks like. WSJ says sellers have been holding out - but they may have waited too long:

Prime Seattle Land for Sale,
Could Reshape City Skyline

Mr. Clise is convinced now is the ideal time to sell. The job-market outlook is robust for Seattle, and the office market, with a low 5% vacancy rate for top-quality "Class A" buildings, is hungry for more space, says Michel Seifer, managing director of capital markets for Jones Lang LaSalle, the real-estate-services firm handling the sale.

Yet, there is a possibility that Mr. Clise, age 57, may have missed his window. Increases in the cost of borrowing -- with the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rising to nearly 5.25% last week -- could keep some previously active real-estate investors on the sidelines for this blockbuster, but inherently risky, transaction. Mr. Clise says if he doesn't get the price he is seeking for the land -- well into the hundreds of millions of dollars -- he could still take it off the market.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1181875 ... lenews_wsj

Comments

  • deeplennondeeplennon
    Just heard this story on Komo this morning.

    The seven city blocks of undeveloped land mentioned are in the Denny Regrade expect many more condo towers in the near future.

    They also own the land Nordstrom's sits on.
  • Denny RetrogradeDenny Retrograde
    Thanks for the link, George! That's really interesting timing. Clise's family is fourth-generation landholders, so they've seen real estate cycle up and then inexorably down several times. If now is the moment they decide to sell, esp. since they're packaging all of it together, smart money's calling the Seattle peak on commercial and residential real estate right...about...now. Wonder if they're too late, though, "smart money" being still not especially smart and all. (Example: just noticed the Clise president sez the land is so ripe any buyer could "start digging in weeks." Er, how long to get a building permit - one, two years on a mega-project? "Weeks" my sweet bippy.) If they do manage to dump this land, it will be interesting to see what the Clises put their money into next, not that it's any of my business, of course. :)
  • mike2mike2
    This article link gives the full story if you enter from google's results.

    http://news.google.com/news?um=1&tab=wn ... %20seattle


    I guess they are making more land after all.
  • bilirubenbiliruben
    So where the frack to the expect me to park. ;)

    At least they don't appear to own the Pink Elephant! Phew.

    My ma's actually taking my advice and selling her house in Portland and renting a condo downtown. She still seems to think she can jack the price however, and still get her price. I hope she's right.
  • uptownuptown
    "on par with New York's Rockefeller Center or London's Canary Wharf."

    What do the two have in common? Bankruptcy.
  • deejayohdeejayoh
    george wrote:
    The smart money knows what a peak looks like. WSJ says sellers have been holding out - but they may have waited too long:

    The point goes to George, it appears


    Clise calls off sale of huge downtown tract
  • The_TimThe_Tim
    Here's a more in-depth article on the subject: Amid Market Turmoil, Clise Family Halts Talks To Sell Seattle Property

    It probably won't give you the full article from that link unless your a WSJ subscriber. Everyone else can get there through Google, at least for the time being.
  • The_TimThe_Tim
    Two more articles in today's local papers for those that don't want to mess with the WSJ junk. Seattle Times and Seattle P-I.
    Seattle Times wrote:
    In retrospect, Clise said, the family should have begun marketing the property a year earlier, before the credit crisis deepened.
    Seattle P-I wrote:
    "Large real estate deals are not being financed right now," Clise Properties Chief Executive Alfred Clise said Thursday afternoon.
    ...
    Frank Bosl, a senior vice president in the Seattle office of CB Richard Ellis, said the move makes sense.

    "The changes in the financial market are causing the capital for doing deals to be out of sync with the value of the real estate right now," he said.
  • redmondjpredmondjp
    edited April 2008
    This is a bit OT, but I believe that these are offspring from the same Clise family that built what is now the Clise Mansion in Marymoor Park, originally built as a hunting lodge:

    http://www.seattlebride.com/clisehist.html

    It's impressive to me when a single family can maintain their dynasty for over a century, especially in these fast-changing times.

    Here's a brief bio of the family's origins in Seattle:

    http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=1688

    EDIT/UPDATE: Well, after a bit more searching, I came up with the following article from last June where they discuss selling off some of their properties. So apparently they have been thinking about this for some time now:

    http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/320124_clise16.html

    And then, just posted last night, they announce that the sale is off:

    http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/360521_clise25.html?source=rss
  • AlanAlan
    At least the picture is nicer this time around.

    I don't know what it will sell for. I wouldn't be surprised if someone picks it up for the asking price.

    I also wouldn't be surprised if it sits on the market for 9 months and eventually becomes a rental.
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