Developers of old Cavanaugh block expect to start work by year’s end

Mayor also to start negotiations with developers over two additional blocks

By Robert Whale • May 8, 2013 4:34 pm
Future glance: A developers’ conceptual look of the Auburn’s Project Lofts at the corner of West Main and South Division streets.
Future glance: A developers’ conceptual look of the Auburn’s Project Lofts at the corner of West Main and South Division streets.

A mixed-use building composed of 12,000 square feet of first-floor retail facing East Main Street, below five floors of 128 market-rate apartments, transformable into condominiums.

Such is the plan developers John McKenna and Brett Jacobsen have for Project Lofts, the name they’ve given to the future building on the old Cavanaugh lot.

Doug Lein, Auburn’s economic development manager, said this week that McKenna and Jacobsen expect to start work by the end of the year and are already into the full design phase of their project.

Their company, Plan A Development, bought the block on East Main Street on March 11 from LLC Bankers Capital Management, LLC and Centrum Financial Services, Inc. for $1.4 million.

According to the City’s newsletter “City News”, Project Lofts is to include a second-floor Plaza Level, replete with a central courtyard offering barbecue areas, entertainment space, garden landscaping, and a community kitchen for the general use of all tenants.

In other development news, Mayor Pete Lewis got the go-ahead Monday to enter into purchase-and-sale negotiations with Teutsch Partners, LLC of Seattle, talks that could end with the real estate services company’s acquisition of the last two City-owned blocks immediately south of City Hall.

On the table, the Krites-Huff block just east of the Sound Transit Center, the Gambini block on South Division, or both.

Under the City’s most optimistic scenario, Lewis said after the City Council’s unanimous vote, it means “all the City blocks in Auburn’s catalyst area” will have been sold within the next 60 days.

Provided that Teutsch acquires any or all of the properties, any project it pursues will have to fit within the framework of the downtown development code, which describes buildings of 5-7 stories with a retail-commercial base and what can be in them.

Spencer Alpert, principal of Alpert International, the force behind Auburn Junction, the proposed 27-parcel, 5.39-acre mixed-use, urban village between the Sound Transit Station, City Hall and Safeway, has a 30-day option to meet or exceed any offer Teutsch Partners makes to the City.

According to Teutsch Partners LLC’s website, the company formed in 1987 and is one of the premium commercial real estate services and development companies in the Pacific Northwest, having experience as both owner-developer and tenant and owner advisor.