A South Lake Union property at 300 Fairview Ave. N. has sold for a little over $5 million, according to King County records. The seller was Fairview Properties LLC, which acquired it in 1998 for $450,000.
The buyer was Ron Amundson, a veteran local property investor. Public records also indicate a loan from KeyBank for the purchase.
The 6,000-square-foot property is at the northeast corner of Fairview and Thomas Street. It has a small retail-industrial building that is leased to a general contractor and a martial arts school.
Corey Sollom of Kidder Mathews represented the seller. Excluding the value of the building, the deal was worth about $841 per square foot.
Amundson’s purchase may complicate bigger plans for the rest of the half-block extending north along Fairview to Harrison Street. Skanska USA has offered to buy the city’s existing streetcar maintenance barn at 318 Fairview. It would pay the city $13 million for the property, then build a new, larger streetcar barn for the city.
On top of the barn, Skanaka would also build an 11-story office building. But the barn would have to be done first, by 2020, because the city needs a larger facility to service more streetcars from the planned new First Avenue line, which will connect the now separate SLU and First Hill lines.
The Seattle City Council has not yet scheduled hearings or a vote to approve a draft purchase and sale agreement that passed out of committee in September.
And that agreement depends on acquiring the two separately owned properties to the south: 306 Fairview and 300 Fairview, which just sold. The city’s draft agreement states that, “Skanska shall have acquired title to or have the unconditional contractual right to acquire title to the Adjacent Properties.”
That deal may now be in jeopardy, since Amundson swooped in first.
Whether he actually intends to develop the property, or if he’s seeking to flip it quickly to Skanska, remains to be seen. No new plans have been filed for the site.
Previously, Amundson has developed smaller properties on Capitol Hill; and he’s currently planning a 54-unit apartment building on the site of a partially collapsed old building in Pioneer Square.
Amundson didn’t respond before deadline to DJC requests for comment.
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