Grainger expands 1919 warehouse at 503 Westlake and lands a CVS

SLU has a new CVS. The pharmacy chain will sign a 20-year lease, with 30 years of options to extend, with the owner and developer of a project at 503 Westlake Ave. N.

The three-story addition to the old two-story Antique Liquidators warehouse has been underway for about two years. The project received a certificate of occupancy this month, shortly before CVS signed a lease memorandum with the LLC associated with owner S.E. Grainger Development Group. Both documents recently entered public record.

503 Westlake, as the project is now called, is on the 6,480-square-foot northwest corner of Westlake and Republican, the heart of South Lake Union. Its immediate neighbor to the north is Amazon’s Delight building.

The two old low-rise masonry buildings are now anomalies in the bustling, burgeoning area.

No opening date for CVS has been announced. CVS will have a nearby competitor in the Bartell a block north on Mercer Street, which opened about seven years ago.

CBRE’s Nate Fliflet and Nick Carkonen are leasing 503 Westlake, which has 38,640 square feet, including the basement. The floor plates average 6,440 square feet.

CVS is taking 4,814 square feet on the ground floor, 5,643 square feet on the second and 3,282 square feet in the basement.

There is no vehicular parking, but a basement bike room will have 20 stalls.

The original 1919 building was generally called the Eberharter Garage, before Antique Liquidators leased it in the 1970s.

It was unsuccessfully nominated as a landmark in February of 2015. A week later, Grainger bought it in two transactions worth $2.75 million. The Smith family’s Antique Liquidators moved to SoDo soon thereafter.

Bellevue-based Grainger generally builds low-rise retail, with current projects in Oak Harbor and Kent.

503 Westlake, in such a dense and expensive neighborhood, is unusual for the firm, which didn’t announce tenants before acquiring the property or beginning construction.

Grace Architects did the principal design for 503 Westlake, which didn’t require design review. Broderick Architects then became the architect of record. Pennon Construction was the general contractor.

Construction began in the summer of 2016, shortly after the final permits were issued.

The team also included Swenson Say Faget, structural engineer; LDP Engineering, civil engineer; Site Workshop, landscape architect; and Lerch Bates, elevator consultant.

Tenant improvement plans by DDG Architects for an unnamed pharmacy were first submitted in the fall of 2016, and approved last month.

Banner Bank was the construction lender. Grainger financed the original purchase through Commerce Bank of Washington. The firm told Puget Sound Business Journal in 2015 that it had no financial partners in the project, and that planning began a few years prior.

Grainger didn’t respond before deadline to DJC queries about other tenants.

CVS also has central Seattle locations in Uptown, Pike/Pine, Belltown and downtown on Second Avenue.

Project Information