http://www.prestigedev.com/PrestigeP...stigePlaza.htm
Council to consider sale of old police building
Friday, April 20, 2007
BY JEFFREY MIZE Columbian staff writer
Developer wants to buy it, replace it with office, residential plaza
A six-story building could rise where the Vancouver Police Department once had its headquarters and city jail.
Elie Kassab, president and chief executive officer of Prestige Development, wants to buy the property at 300 E. 13th St., demolish the old police station and build Prestige Plaza. The project would have five floors of office space, each with 20,000 square feet, five condominiums on the top floor and 149 underground parking spaces.
The city council will be asked to approve an agreement Monday night to sell the property for $200,000.
In November, PGP Valuation Inc. appraised the property at $170,000. If the city cleared the site and removed hazardous materials, such as asbestos tiles and lead-based paint, the property would be worth $600,000, the appraiser concluded.
However, a city report says demolition would cost $520,000 to $830,000 and possibly more, depending on what was found during site clearing.
“It is a terrible building,” said Steve Burdick, the city’s economic development manager. “It has no windows. It’s all chopped up, and it has an old jail in the basement.”
The half-block Kassab wants to buy from the city is located on the same block as the iconic Burgerville on the south side of Mill Plain Boulevard, near the entrance into downtown.
Kassab said he still might purchase the Burgerville site, but he intends to build Prestige Plaza even if Burgerville remains.
“I love their burgers, but they don’t have any (indoor) seating and they don’t have a drive-through, so that facility is a little dated,” he said.
Last fall, Kassab paid $150,000 for one-eighth of the block, the southeast corner of Mill Plain and C Street, where Burgerville currently offers outdoor seating.
Kassab said he intends to move his company’s offices to Prestige Plaza. He said he is talking to three banks, which he declined to name, that could occupy the building’s bottom floor.
One of the banks, he said, is interested in two floors.
“I believe there is a demand,” he said. “We have fairly strong interest in over 50 percent of the project.”
Kassab also doesn’t expect to have trouble finding buyers for the condos.
“I am going to be living in one of them,” he said. “I can actually sell them all myself because they are going to have very good-sized decks, and they are going to have very nice amenities. … They are going to be priced reasonably, and they are going to be tailored to the lifestyle of urban living where people are going to be able to entertain.”
Kassab would like to begin construction in April 2008, which coincides with the deadline for the city to vacate the old police station, provided the council approves the sale Monday night.
Several years ago, the police department moved its administrative headquarters to the former Washington State Patrol building at the west end of Officers Row and dispersed other operations to its central and east precincts.
In recent years, the police department has used the 13th Street building for evidence storage. The city last month submitted plans to build a 14,600-square-foot evidence center, with 16,000 square feet of secured outdoor storage, at 2325 W. Mill Plain Blvd.
Burdick said the city is under no legal responsibility to put the former police headquarters on the market.
The city sought formal proposals for a portion of the old Lucky Lager Brewery site, along the north side of Esther Short Park, before selling the cleared property to the Al Angelo Co., which built the Heritage Place condominiums.
For the portion of the brewery property along the east side of Esther Short Park, the city negotiated a sale with Otak Inc., which built Vancouvercenter on the property.
Vancouver is using a broker to sell the Citizens Service Center, which the city is vacating because of seismic weaknesses that would require expensive upgrades.
“We can sell property however we think the net benefit to the city is the greatest,” Burdick said.
Jeffrey Mize covers Vancouver city government. He can be reached at 360-759-8006 or by e-mail at
jeff.mize@columbian.com.
http://www.columbian.com/news/localN...news129645.cfm
(I copied from other member's post from other thread to make the building to have its own thread, hope you don't mind!
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