The top four floors of the landmark building, which sold for $65 million, will be converted into office space.
The top four floors of Macy’s downtown Seattle location have been sold for $65 million and will be converted into office space, the company announced Friday.
The buyer is an affiliate of Starwood Capital Group, a private investment firm with a global real-estate focus headquartered in Greenwich, Conn.
The Macy’s store will remain open and operating in the lower level plus levels one through four of the landmark building, shrinking its current selling space from 363,000 square feet to 283,000 square feet. All 265 current employees will remain at the store, the company said.
“Macy’s on Pine Street is a very successful business serving a thriving community of downtown residents and workers,” Macy’s Chairman and CEO Terry Lundgren said in a statement. “Our vision is to make the store easier and quicker to navigate while also attracting new jobs and economic activity to space that has not been fully utilized.”
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The Seattle Times reported last month that Macy’s had plans for the top levels of its 300 Pine St. location, built in 1929 and originally The Bon Marché. It was declared a city landmark in 1989.
The Landmark Preservation Board last month approved a proposal to add new express elevators serving floors 1, 5, 6, 7 and 8, a new shared lobby space and doors at the skybridge entrance on the sixth floor.
An office lobby is also planned for the mezzanine level of the store, which is at the Third Avenue entrance. Two 11-foot-tall glass “clerestory penthouses” will bring daylight to the seventh and eighth floors.
“We believe that this asset offers exactly the kind of highly amenitized, lifestyle-oriented office that is in very limited supply and high demand in Seattle today,” Mark Deason, senior vice president at Starwood Capital Group, said in a statement.”
The company expects to have the space ready in a year.
Macy’s has been shedding real estate around the country.
Earlier this summer, The Wall Street Journal reported Macy’s was selling the five top floors of its nine-story property in downtown Brooklyn, N.Y.
In July, Macy’s also announced the sale of its Pittsburgh store to a developer planning a mixed-use redevelopment for the historic building.