Big West Seattle Retail/Apartment Development Planned
Eric Pryne, THE SEATTLE TIMES
The old Huling Brothers auto showrooms and lots on busy Fauntleroy Way Southwest at the entrance to West Seattle have sat mostly vacant since the dealerships closed five years ago.
Now the properties are finally showing signs of life.
Two high-powered national developers have unveiled plans for a six-story building with more than 350 apartments above 65,000 square feet of stores on the long block where Huling Brothers Chevrolet once did business.
The project, which would include underground parking for more than 500 cars, is a joint venture of Weingarten Realty Investors of Houston, which specializes in supermarkets, and Miami-based residential developer Lennar.
Their proposal comes just months after specialty grocer Trader Joe’s opened a store two blocks away in the extensively remodeled former showroom of Huling Buick.
Across Fauntleroy, Highline Medical Center is renovating the former Huling Brothers Chrysler showroom, most recently a bicycle shop and school. Highline expects to open an urgent-care and family-medicine clinic there in November.
“Things are definitely happening, and it’s kind of exciting,” said John Wunder of real-estate firm Associates West, who oversees the Huling portfolio.
When the Huling dealerships closed suddenly in 2007, “they left a large void in business and commerce in West Seattle,” said Susan Melrose, director of the West Seattle Junction Association, a business group.
“They’re very visible,” she said of the properties. “They’re the gateway to our neighborhood. …
“They were a reminder of the down economy. It was a little depressing.”
But the dealerships’ demise also created an unanticipated opportunity for redevelopment that’s at last being realized, Melrose said.
The Weingarten/Lennar project, which would cover about 2.5 acres on the west side of Fauntleroy between Southwest Alaska and Edmunds streets, “could be very much a landmark building in our neighborhood,” she said.
In addition to the Huling buildings, a gas station and funeral home would be demolished to make way for the complex, said Lance Sherwood, senior development manager with Weingarten.
The city’s Southwest Design Review Board will get its first look at the project Sept. 27. All the land is under contract and should close in mid-2013, Sherwood said, with groundbreaking tentatively slated for late 2013.
Weingarten is in “advanced negotiations” with a grocer who would lease about two-thirds of the retail space, he said.
The City Council changed the block’s zoning in January, imposing new development standards to encourage pedestrian-friendly design and increasing the height limit from 65 to 85 feet.
But Sherwood said the Weingarten/Lennar complex won’t be that tall, because it seems out of scale with the neighborhood.
Weingarten is a shopping-center developer and investor with properties in 22 states, according to its website. The company’s local holdings include Promenade 23 in the Central District and Rainier Square Plaza on Rainier Avenue South.
Lennar, the country’s third-largest builder of single-family homes, is a newcomer to the apartment business: Its multifamily division is just a year old.
The company also is a newcomer to Western Washington. It established a presence here less than a year ago when it bought Premier Communities of Puyallup.
Huling’s former West Seattle dealerships shut down in the aftermath of a scandal.
Huling Brothers sold its 60-year-old business to Gee Automotive Companies of Spokane in January 2007, but retained the land and buildings.
Two weeks later, three former Huling employees were charged with bilking a mentally ill customer out of more than $100,000 in 2006. Gee, claiming the notoriety had cut its business by half, closed the dealerships in fall 2007.
Former owner Steve Huling blamed Gee’s problems on bad business practices.
Altogether, Huling Brothers still owns more than 5 acres in the West Seattle Junction area, according to property records. The Weingarten/Lennar, Trader Joe’s and Highline Medical properties account for more than half that total.
Huling is seeking permits for a six-story apartment building with about 170 units at 35th Avenue Southwest and Southwest Oregon Street, a few blocks east of its former showrooms.
It doesn’t plan to build the project itself, said Wunder of Associates West.