While it was the last retail space to be leased in the 26-story office tower, it is by all accounts a location with good potential for success. In addition to being at the foot of a fully leased, 700,000-sf office building, the restaurant will be adjacent a 10-screen Regal Cinema, a Nordstrom department store and a surface parking lot that eventually will be put underground, expanded and topped with a park. As well, light rail and the city's de facto gathering place, Pioneer Square are just one block away, and much of the city's Downtown hotel, retail, and office buildings are within a five-minute walk.
McLain is president of Celebrity Concepts LLC, the restaurant company that owns Oba! in the Pearl District and Hall Street Grill in Beaverton. To help attract people to the new Downtown restaurant--the name, concept and design of which are still under development, or at least not yet being revealed--McLain tells GlobeSt.com that he will focus on signage and transform the rather normal looking street-level access into a "dramatic entrance" that will include both a stairwell and an elevator that top out at the restaurant.
McLain says the restaurant will be open for lunch during the week, dinner everyday and a late-night menu for the after-movie crowd. The facilities will include a private dining area and two bars, one for nonsmokers and one for cigar smokers.
McLain says he planned to open a Downtown location much sooner than this--in November Oba! will be eight years old--but put things on hold for a couple of years after the events of Sept. 11, 2001 and the subsequent economic nosedive. Serendipitously--and a sign of the times--the Fox Tower space he was eyeing back then was still available when he decided to jump back into the mix.
McLain says he was negotiating for two other Downtown locations before opting for the Fox Tower location. He wouldn't reveal any of the lease details, saying only that "between ourselves and Tom Moyer we came to a good middle ground."
The asking rate for the mezzanine space 12 months ago, when clothier Mario Bisio signed on for space on the front side of the building, was $25 per sf. After another year of vacancy, Moyer likely was more than willing to drop the rate and/or provide a healthy tenant improvement allowance. The capture of Mario's, who committed to a 10-year lease for a prominent space that had sat vacant for two years, Moyer reportedly offered up a TI allowance in excess of $50 per sf.
Continue Reading for Free
Register and gain access to:
- Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
