Why Two High-Value Seattle Blocks Are Still Abandoned

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Look at this map of downtown Seattle.

[00:00:01]Something is off. Something hard to notice from up here, but something people have been talking about for a while. To see it, we need to zoom in on two very different parts of the city.

[00:00:11]What you're seeing here are two undeveloped holes in parts of Seattle where land is anything but cheap. One of them has sat in this condition for more than two decades. The other is now closing in on a decade. For a lot of reasons, that is not normal. And each one has a very different story behind it. Seeing them from above, I kept coming back to the same question. Why?

[00:00:31]So, I went to Seattle to find out.

[00:00:33][music] Let's start with 1120 John Street. This is the one I spent time walking around and it's the former site of the Seattle Times. The newspaper first began operations here in 1931 with a complex that eventually included office space and printing operations. But most importantly for this story, the site also had at least 11 underground storage tanks holding fuels, oils, and ink-related compounds. And more on those in a minute. The Seattle Times stopped operating here in 2011 and Onni bought the property in 2013. By then, the site was already carrying two major burdens.

[00:01:04]There was industrial contamination below grade and there were historic structures above grade.

[00:01:10]Washington's ecology records say testing found petroleum hydrocarbons and other contaminants in the site's soil and groundwater above state standards. These chemicals can threaten human health and the environment if they're left in the ground or allowed to move through groundwater. Former industrial sites all over the country run into the same problem. So, in this case, the redevelopment became part of the cleanup strategy. The site had to be dug deep enough to remove or manage contaminated material and groundwater, which is a slow and expensive process.

[00:01:37]In eyes of the city, the old Seattle Times property was not architecturally disposable. By the time modern development plans came together, parts of the complex were under landmark protection, which meant the developer couldn't wipe the block clean and start over. Significant exterior portions had to be preserved and braced instead.

[00:01:53]That's why the site has had that strange look for so long, with the historic facade still standing at the edge of the pit, all of this to say, beyond its prime location, this was the kind of site that tends to scare developers off.

[00:02:05]Even with all that in mind, by July 2018, came the idea to build office space. A land use application was filed for two office towers, 116 and the other 18 stories, along with retail and service space. The plan called for roughly 940,000 sq ft of office space, about 54,000 sq ft of retail and commercial uses, and around 1,000 parking stalls. The idea was that this block would become another major employment site in the middle of South Lake Union, which by then had already been reshaped by tech growth, institutional expansion, and rising land values. And at the time, that made sense, because South Lake Union had become one of Seattle's clearest areas for office growth.

[00:02:42]By 2022, excavation and major groundwork were underway, and by late 2024, the North Block garage pit was already partially completed and substantially built below grade. Two tower cranes still remained on site. And to me, having covered so many field developments, this is what makes the project so interesting. It got past entitlements, past demolition, past cleanup planning, and deep enough into construction that the underground structure itself had already become a major sunk cost. And then the plans started to crack. In December 2023, work had paused with the delay tied to garage revisions and related fire code changes.

[00:03:16]About 10 months later, the Daily Journal of Commerce reported that Onni had dropped the North Block's office plan.

[00:03:21][music] It was replaced with a residential concept calling for over 800 units in 14 and 49-story towers over the partially completed garage pit. By December 2024, the block was being split into phases with apartments on the west side and possible future office space on the east side.

[00:03:36]You could probably guess why that shift happened. The pandemic changed the office market. [music] But I wanted to add some numbers to back it up. In Q3 2024, downtown Seattle office vacancy reached 26.9% and the market posted more than 2.5 million sq ft of negative trailing 12-month absorption, meaning companies were still giving back space much faster than new tenants were taking it. So, by the time Onni had to make a decision, the case for building more office space in this block had become much weaker than it had been just a few years earlier.

[00:04:07]By contrast, Seattle multifamily occupancy in that same quarter was 94.8% or about 5% vacancy. To be fair, that multifamily data was for the entire Seattle area, not just downtown, but it gives you a right idea. While the office market had weakened badly, apartments were holding up much better. And because the site was already so far built below grade, Onni could not easily scrap the project or completely start over without taking a major hit.

[00:04:33]And as of today, there's not much good news here. The towers are not back under construction. Onni is still marketing future space at the site, so the project is alive, but public records show it has remained tied up in redesign, extensions, and permitting through 2025 and into 2026. The cleanup is also not fully complete or formally signed off.

[00:04:52]Washington Ecology still lists the site as cleanup started, and the property has not reached final closure. Okay, enough about that. Let's jump to the site across from City Hall. This is Civic Square at 601 Fourth Avenue on the former site of the Public Safety Building. That building was demolished in 2005 and ever since this block has remained one of the most visible stalled redevelopment sites in downtown Seattle.

[00:05:14]And understandably, people in the city have been very frustrated by how long it has stayed that way for about 21 years now.

[00:05:22]The original framework was set in December 2007 when the sale and redevelopment of the block was approved with Triad Civic Center LLC. The city valued the deal at $25 million.

[00:05:31]In return, Triad was supposed to finance the redevelopment, build the Civic Square public plaza on the south portion of the site, and then transfer that completed plaza back to the city.

[00:05:40][music] So, from the beginning, the entire deal depended on the private development and the public space being financed and delivered together.

[00:05:47]Then the 2008 financial crisis hit and the deal started to collapse. Triad's financing dried up and because the tower and public plaza were tied together, once the tower no longer worked, the plaza stalled as well. The city gave Triad extensions for years and Triad even tried to transfer its rights to Touchstone, but that effort failed as well. So by 2016, Seattle reset the site with Bosa Development. Under that new deal, the city said it would receive $16 million for the Equitable Development Initiative 5.7 million for affordable housing. And like what I talked about at John Street, the project shifted away from the older office heavy concept toward a residential tower with retail.

[00:06:25]Bosa's proposal included a 58-story, 422-unit residential tower along with retail, the public plaza, and parking for about 500 vehicles, which meant the question was now, going to downtown residential tower carry all the costs and obligations tied to the site?

[00:06:40][music] It still had to fund the public plaza, meet the expectations that come with building across from City Hall, and absorb the cost of a major high-rise in downtown Seattle.

[00:06:49]And that brings us to today. Kind of like over at John Street, the project [music] is still not moving forward in any meaningful way. Significant construction activity had ceased in July of 2022. [music] Axios Seattle reported in November of 2024 that the site was in a holding pattern, citing a Seattle building department spokesperson. So why can these sites just sit there? Well, once the land is privately owned, the city usually can't force a sale just because a project is stalled, ugly, or embarrassing. It can fine owners for safety problems and code issues, but that's obviously much different. And from the developer side, waiting or doing nothing can still be the less risky option. If financing is expensive, construction costs are high, office demand has weakened, or the deal just no longer makes sense, moving forward can lock in a loss that is worse than sitting on the site and hoping conditions improve. And that's really the story of both these sites. They're stuck because the economics, the timing, the permitting, and in some cases the public obligation stop lining up. So, no one really wins. Seattle is left with two highly visible scars in some of its most important real estate. The public gets no towers, no finished streetscape, and its Civic Square no long promised public plaza. And the developers are left holding expensive sites that are still not delivering the return they were supposed to.

[00:08:03]All we can hope at this point is that something makes the math change. And I'm interested in the local perspective.

[00:08:09]What do you think about these? [music] Let me know in the comments below. With that being said, I'm Josh. This is Build Core. Thanks for watching.

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