Ascona Apartments in the ID sell for $11M

The Ascona Apartments, at 200 Fifth Ave. S., have sold for $11.25 million, according to King County records. The seller was Paradigm Ascona LLC, which acquired the property in 2014 for $6.75 million.

The buyer was Ascona Seattle LLC, a group of private local investors, which had no broker representation.

Casey Zejdlik and Jason Kono of Pilot Ventures represented the seller. Kono said that Pilot was also a partner in that ownership group.

The Ascona was developed in 1910 on a 7,200-square-foot lot on the southeast corner of Fifth and South Washington Street. The five-story building now has 57 units and 24,442 rentable square feet, according to Pilot. The Ascona is a short walk to Pioneer Square, the stadium district and the transit tunnel. The nearest grocery story is Uwajimaya.

Prior to 2009, the former hotel was used for low-income housing by the Archdiocesan Housing Authority. Under terms of the 2009 sale to Daly Partners, all rents were capped to varying percentages of area median income until 2024. Daly then upgraded the building and added an elevator.

Following the 2014 sale, says Pilot, the building had a full earthquake retrofit and further improvements. In exchange, the Archdiocesan Housing Authority amended the old agreement to gradually step-down the percentages of affordable units, until the building goes fully market-rate in 2022.

The Ascona renovation team included Ecco Design, architect; Cadence Builds, general contractor; and Swenson Say Faget, structural engineer.

The apartments are 96 percent leased, and the property has a cap rate of 4.14 percent, says Pilot. The transaction was worth about $197,368 per unit.