Cafe space in Seattle's King Street Station for rent, finally

[CHamilton]

For rent: Office space above Seattle’s historic train station

For the first time, office space is being offered for rent in Seattle's King Street Station.


The city of Seattle is looking for someone to lease around 23,500 square feet of office space on the second and third floors of the historic King Street Station. In addition, a small amount of restaurant space is available on the first floor.

This is the first time since the 1906 station opened that office space in the building has been offered for lease, according to the city.

The space in the station, famous for its clock tower that's a shorter copy of the campanile on Piazza San Marco in Venice, is being offered in shell form. There are three smaller spaces on the second floor totaling around 6,500 square feet and a 16,800-square-foot space on floor three. The cafe space on the first floor measures 1,350 square feet.

Seattle, which bought the building from BNSF Railway six years ago for $10 and then spent approximately $50 million renovating the building, issued a "request for proposals" from would-be tenants. The city transportation department is soliciting market-rate proposals from groups that would rent individual suites or companies that would master lease the entire space and then rent it out and manage it. The space is in shell condition and is being leased as is. Improvements would be the responsibility of the tenants.

The city will give prospective tenants tours on May 29 and June 10. Proposals are due June 19.

Request for Proposals (PDF)

 

[Bob Dylan]

Charlie: Does this include any space for a Metro Lounge for Amtrak???

 

[CHamilton]

Jim,

I'm trying to figure that out. The RFP does not match what we'd heard before -- that Amtrak had the lease on the entire first and second floors. This is evidently not true. The RFP includes:

• a fairly small space on the first floor (the photo in the RFP shows it as being near the bottom of the new stairwell)
• almost all the second floor (the balcony/mezzanine that overlooks the main floor; the only part of the second floor that is listed as a "common area" is the corridor leading between the Jackson Street entrance, the elevator, and the balcony area)
• the entire third floor (none of which was finished during the renovation).

The intent of this Request for Proposals (“RFP”) is to solicit market rate proposals from either a) tenants interested in leasing the 2nd and 3rd floors of KSS, b) separate tenants for each of three spaces on the 2nd floor (A, B and C on Exhibit 2), c) a master tenant (who would have responsibility for marketing, paying for tenant improvements, leasing and managing the office portion of the building) and/or d) a separate tenant for the café space on the 1st floor (a café lease would be subject to Amtrak approval). Potential tenant uses might include office, school and/or restaurant. ...


The City is looking for RFP responses that: ...

• include at a minimum, tenants for the east and/or west sides of the 2nd floor, and a single tenant for the 3rd floor, or a single tenant that will lease both the 2nd and 3rd floors. ...


Rental Space

Potential Tenant Spaces have been prepared to ‘shell and core’. Figure 1 identifies the location of rental spaces and the amount of Useable square feet in each space.

1st floor 1,350 sf SW corner [this location may not be right], potential café or restaurant
2nd floor 1,660 sf Area A
2nd floor 2,233 sf Area B
2nd floor 2,419 Area C
2nd floor 450 sf Potential addition to Area C on adjacent Mezzanine
3rd floor 16,800 sf Area D

 

[D T Nelson]

I am 99 percent sure the cafe space available on the first floor is the old Women's Waiting Room at the southwest corner of the building, which later was used (I believe) as a break room for the Amtrak ticket agents when the ticket counter was next to it. It was seismically retrofitted as part of the renovation but remained an unfinished shell in the last photos I saw. The photo of the new staircase CHamilton refers to is on the second floor; I'm not sure why they bothered to put that in the RFP.

The doors I have circled in this photo lead to the space in question.

 

[CHamilton]

D T, I think you are right. The RFP does refer to the Women's waiting room space, which would indeed be in the southwest corner, but I was misled by the photo of the stairway in the RFP.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Much nicer place now than how it look at the gathering a few years back.

Good job Seatle, now about the water front trolley...

 

[rickycourtney]

While I'm excited that something is FINALLY happening on this front... I'm less than thrilled with this RFP.

* I love the idea of putting a cafe on the first floor but I fear that the stations 14 arrivals/departures per day won't be able to support a business. (It will be too inconvenient for most commuters on the Sounder trains to access this cafe.)

* I hope that a restaurant or some other retail businesses go into that second floor space. It would be a shame to see that all that space become offices.

* I'm disappointed that no space appears to be reserved for a Metropolitan Lounge on the second floor. It suppose it's a possibility that Amtrak could make a proposal to lease some of the second floor space for that purpose... but considering the current trend of cost cutting, I doubt the cheapskates managing Amtrak would even bother bidding.

 

[neroden]

The artificial segregation of Sounder and Cascades trains at King St. is not good. I don't know why they did it. Connecting from Sounder to Cascades is ridiculously convoluted.

 

[the_traveler]

I'm not sure what you mean by segregation. Do you mean timing of trains? :huh: The times I've been thru there, I've seen Sounder trains on the next track. If so the same could be said for LAX, CHI, WAS, PHL, NYP and BOS.

 

[neroden]

I'm not sure what you mean by segregation. Do you mean timing of trains? :huh: The times I've been thru there, I've seen Sounder trains on the next track. If so the same could be said for LAX, CHI, WAS, PHL, NYP and BOS.

Try to walk from the Sounder Platform to the Cascades platform. (Or vice versa.)

The existence of a separate "Sounder platform" and "Cascades platform" should give you a hint as to the problem. Once you actually trace the walking routes (there are two possibilities: both suck), you'll be annoyed.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I always wondered why the Seattle Transit outfit that has their headquarters in the beautifully restored Union Station couldn't have worked out a way to make it easier To go from the stop @ the Union Station to King Street Station and vice versa?!!!

 

[neroden]

The shorter route is 550 feet from the northern Sounder staircase to the closest Cascades platform, and involves crossing two busy streets.

The longer route is 680 feet from the southern Sounder staircase to the closest Cascades platform, and involves walking through a parking lot with no sidewalks.

And yes, the Sounder and Cascades trains are on adjacent tracks.

It's asinine. There's no integration at all; the Sounder station and Cascades station are treated as completely isolated operations.

 

[CHamilton]

It's asinine. There's no integration at all; the Sounder station and Cascades station are treated as completely isolated operations.

I totally agree. I have no idea why integration with Sounder wasn't built into the renovation of KSS, except to guess that Sound Transit didn't put any money into the project. Funding for the KSS renovation came from:

$10 M from the City of Seattle’s Bridging the Gap Levy
$40 M from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA),
the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), the Washington State Historical Society,
the South Downtown Foundation and 4Culture.

 

[Eric S]

I've only been to/through SEA a few times, so I'm not all that familiar with the station and layout. I remember thinking that it looked like the Amtrak and Sounder platforms were completely separate, but figured I must have just been missing some easy connection.

What's the story or history there? Was the Sounder platform added (or, if pre-existing but unused, rehabilitated) specifically for Sounder service and never used prior to that for Amtrak service? Was there a connection from it to the station building, either at-grade or above/below the tracks?

 

[SubwayNut]

Strangely both the Amtrak and Sounder platforms have the same signage and track numberings. I've put them together as one for my Seattle-King Street Station page that I think was shortsighted doing considering the lack of integration of the entire station.

 

[neroden]

I've only been to/through SEA a few times, so I'm not all that familiar with the station and layout. I remember thinking that it looked like the Amtrak and Sounder platforms were completely separate, but figured I must have just been missing some easy connection.

What's the story or history there? Was the Sounder platform added (or, if pre-existing but unused, rehabilitated) specifically for Sounder service and never used prior to that for Amtrak service? Was there a connection from it to the station building, either at-grade or above/below the tracks?

I believe the Sounder platform was added specifically for Sounder service, and I think it started with only the northern access point -- I may be wrong. Amtrak was *already operating at the time*.

If I remember correctly, the big fancy pedestrian overbridge was later added at the south side, but it carefully avoided having any access to the Amtrak platforms. This was the really bizarre move.

 

[rickycourtney]

I've only been to/through SEA a few times, so I'm not all that familiar with the station and layout. I remember thinking that it looked like the Amtrak and Sounder platforms were completely separate, but figured I must have just been missing some easy connection.

What's the story or history there? Was the Sounder platform added (or, if pre-existing but unused, rehabilitated) specifically for Sounder service and never used prior to that for Amtrak service? Was there a connection from it to the station building, either at-grade or above/below the tracks?

I believe the Sounder platform was added specifically for Sounder service, and I think it started with only the northern access point -- I may be wrong. Amtrak was *already operating at the time*.
If I remember correctly, the big fancy pedestrian overbridge was later added at the south side, but it carefully avoided having any access to the Amtrak platforms. This was the really bizarre move.

Well bizarre when you look at it from a global perspective... but it's not that bizarre coming from Amtrak who so tightly controls access to its platforms we have invented terms like "gate dragon" and "kindergarten walk" to describe it.

 

[Karl1459]

Question? What was the historic access between (GN/NP) King Street and (UP/CMSP&P) Union Station?

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I wonder if the real issue is that Amtrak would throw a fit if anyone was allowed near the platforms without having to be walked there by the

I've only been to/through SEA a few times, so I'm not all that familiar with the station and layout. I remember thinking that it looked like the Amtrak and Sounder platforms were completely separate, but figured I must have just been missing some easy connection.

What's the story or history there? Was the Sounder platform added (or, if pre-existing but unused, rehabilitated) specifically for Sounder service and never used prior to that for Amtrak service? Was there a connection from it to the station building, either at-grade or above/below the tracks?

I believe the Sounder platform was added specifically for Sounder service, and I think it started with only the northern access point -- I may be wrong. Amtrak was *already operating at the time*.
If I remember correctly, the big fancy pedestrian overbridge was later added at the south side, but it carefully avoided having any access to the Amtrak platforms. This was the really bizarre move.

Well bizarre when you look at it from a global perspective... but it's not that bizarre coming from Amtrak who so tightly controls access to its platforms we have invented terms like "gate dragon" and "kindergarten walk" to describe it.

Good point. Amtrak seems to view their customers as a bunch of moronic idiots who can't be trusted anywhere near the tracks. I've ridden trains in several other countries and never once have I seen Amtrak's special brand of overbearing guardianship anywhere else. Even here in the US this seemingly irrational fear of passengers waiting on train platforms is largely unique to Amtrak.

 

[D T Nelson]

Question? What was the historic access between (GN/NP) King Street and (UP/CMSP&P) Union Station?

I am pretty sure it was: Go up the stairs and exit King Street Station on the Jackson Street (north) side. Walk across the parking lot to Jackson Street, turn right (east), walk east along Jackson Street, cross 2nd Avenue Extension S, cross 4th Avenue S, walk to the Jackson Street entrance of Union Station, turn right (south), enter. I don't believe there was ever passenger access from one to the other at track level. I have seen pictures from the late 1920s that show a wooden footbridge from the northeast corner of the second floor of King Street Station across the tracks and the under-construction 2nd Avenue Extension S to 4th Avenue S, but it looked like a temporary bridge, undoubtedly there because the construction of 2nd Avenue Extension S prevented pedestrian access to Jackson Street.

 

[zephyr17]

Question? What was the historic access between (GN/NP) King Street and (UP/CMSP&P) Union Station?

I am pretty sure it was: Go up the stairs and exit King Street Station on the Jackson Street (north) side. Walk across the parking lot to Jackson Street, turn right (east), walk east along Jackson Street, cross 2nd Avenue Extension S, cross 4th Avenue S, walk to the Jackson Street entrance of Union Station, turn right (south), enter. I don't believe there was ever passenger access from one to the other at track level. I have seen pictures from the late 1920s that show a wooden footbridge from the northeast corner of the second floor of King Street Station across the tracks and the under-construction 2nd Avenue Extension S to 4th Avenue S, but it looked like a temporary bridge, undoubtedly there because the construction of 2nd Avenue Extension S prevented pedestrian access to Jackson Street.

There was a track level "tunnel" between the two under 4th Ave S.

 

[CHamilton]

For rent: Space in a Seattle landmark

For perhaps the first time since King Street Station opened in 1906, office space in the station is available for lease.

The 24,912 square feet being offered include café space on the first floor and a massive, 16,800-square-foot third floor. The city of Seattle owns the building and has set a June 19 deadline for proposals.

The article has some very nice behind-the-scenes photos of the station.

 

[TraneMan]

For rent: Space in a Seattle landmark

For perhaps the first time since King Street Station opened in 1906, office space in the station is available for lease.

The 24,912 square feet being offered include café space on the first floor and a massive, 16,800-square-foot third floor. The city of Seattle owns the building and has set a June 19 deadline for proposals.

The article has some very nice behind-the-scenes photos of the station.

What was these space used for in the past?

 

[CHamilton]

AFAIK, these spaces have not been used in many years.

 

[Sactobob]

I think the spaces on the upper floors were once used as office space for the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads.