The dilapidated El Rey in Belltown was days away from the wrecking ball when its next-door neighbor hatched a plan to buy the building for a symbolic price of $20.
Arts collective Common Area Maintenance acquired the property in a gift transfer from Sound, a behavioral health provider that operated the building as a treatment facility before being forced to move out in 2020 due to long-running maintenance concerns.
Common Area Maintenance, also known as CAM worked out a deal to take over the 1909-built brick building in what the group's Executive Director Timothy Firth called "one of the most unconventional real estate transactions in Seattle in recent memory."
"El Rey was widely viewed as an unmarketable liability," Firth said. "The building was vacant, burdened by deferred maintenance, under fire watch and had an issued demolition permit. No private developer would take on that risk and traditional lenders would not underwrite it."
The project that aims to be a template for cities to return endangered buildings to community use earned the deal a 2026 CoStar Impact Award, as judged by real estate professionals familiar with the market.
About the project: The renovated El Rey will combine affordable housing, artist residencies, nonprofit offices and ground-level cultural space, creating "an ecosystem where people can live, work, teach, exhibit and gather," Firth said.
CAM raised more than $500,000 in under six months to stop demolition and stabilize the structure. The city housing office agreed to forgive a loan and greenlight a renovation of the building at 2119 Second Ave. as affordable rentals.
The sale was recorded by King County in late November at a price of $20 in a symbolic property transfer for public benefit, records show.
"The El Rey did not set a record for price per square foot," Firth said. "It set a record for impact per square foot."
What the judges said: The complex deal involved multiple parties, from government and nonprofit agencies to real estate and financing experts, said Tyler Barth, senior vice president of investment with Kilroy Realty Corp.
"The acquisition pulled El Rey out of the grave and gave it a life," said Abhishek Garg, senior real estate development manager at Amazon Web Services.
They made it happen: Rod Keefe of Kidder Mathews represented the buyer. Guy Delisi of Sound Behavioral Health represented the seller. Ben Rankin of Conlin Columbia is the project's developer. Lacey Barker of the Seattle Office of Housing and Adam DeBruler of BNBuilders also advised the buyer and seller.