Ridpath condos seek new niche
The new owners of the Ridpath Hotel’s Executive Court plan to convert 77 hotel rooms into 50 condominiums and offer them for sale at prices starting below $200,000.
The units will be around 600 square feet and could be ready for occupancy by the end of the year, said Tomlinson Black CEO Dave Black, who bought that portion of the hotel with three partners on Wednesday for $3.3 million. The Executive Court fronts First Avenue and includes ground-floor retail space, a swimming pool and underground parking.
“We’re going to hit a market niche that hasn’t been hit in this town: upscale smaller units,” Black said. “Everybody that’s been doing condo projects, it’s half a million and up, it seems like.”
Black’s partners on the project are Grant Person of Tomlinson Black; Greg Jeffreys, owner of G.J.’s General Contractors in Spokane; and Scott Taylor, owner of a Phoenix, Ariz., apartment building business called Mark-Taylor Inc. The company they formed is called Executive Court LLC.
Several downtown condominium projects, including West 809 Main, the Upper Falls condominiums and the Carnegie Square Townhouses, are offering units for sale at prices starting around $500,000. Other condominium projects, including 1016 Rail Side Center and the Jefferson Street Auto Lofts, offer units at lower prices, but the prices grow with the size of the condos. Of the newly announced downtown condominium projects, Executive Court LLC’s will be the first to offer so many units for sale in that price range.
Person said the partners also plan to lease out 25,000 square feet of retail space available on the ground floor.
“We’d love to have a grocery store in there,” Person said. “It would be a perfect fit for downtown.”
The partners are talking to upscale grocery stores such as Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods about occupying all or part of the space. Black said a typical Trader Joe’s requires only 12,000 square feet, which, if signed, would leave room for additional tenants or office space. Though numerous downtown developers have tried to attract a grocery store to the city’s core, Black said he thinks this project may have an advantage.
“We’ve got parking,” Black said, of the 40 spaces he and his partners purchased south of the hotel as part of the deal. “Most locations don’t have any parking and healthy retailers always need more parking.”
Jeffreys said the group has already taken about 25 reservations from people interested in buying the units. He said the potential buyers are all local and range widely in age.
“And we’ve had zero advertising,” he said. “This has been all street talk, word of mouth.”
Black said the construction on the $8 million to $10 million project should begin in May and be complete by fall. The condominium project is being designed by Gary Bernardo of Bernardo-Wills Architects.