Lone Star City

You may not have noticed the change downtown this week, but the air might taste just a tad more country. One of our skyscrapers just got bought by Texas. Ok, not by Texas, actually, but by Houston-based developer, Hines.

4001 Fourth Avenue Plaza (previously the Seafirst Bank tower) near the new Central Library was purchased for $162 million. Apparently the thing is falling apart. "In need of some TLC," as the Seattle Times phrases it. "It's a building whose fundamental potential we really believe in," Hines says. The fifty story high-rise was Seattle's talles building from the date of its construction in 1969 up to 1985 and was the first Vierendeel space frame building constructed. It used to be referred to as "the box the Space Needle came in".

The tower does not represent the first boot print left by the Texas developers in downtown Seattle. The nearby IDX tower also passed through Hines's hands in December.