Walls Property plans 200-unit apartment building in Seattle’s Ballard

For 17 years, developer has assembled parcels for the estimated $40M project

Walls Property Plans 200 Apartments in Seattle’s Ballard

Walls Property Group founder and CEO Preston Walls along with a photo illustration of the current and planned sites at 1723 Northwest Market Street in Seattle, Washington (Getty, Walls Property Group, Google Maps)

Walls Property Group wants to build a roughly 200-unit apartment complex in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.

The locally based developer has filed preliminary plans to construct a seven-story building at 1723 NW Market Street, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported. It would replace several commercial buildings, now home to a restaurant and some medical clinics.

The $40 million project, designed by N5 Architecture, calls for a building with about 200 units, capped by a rooftop deck. The ground floor would include 3,600 square feet of shops and restaurants. Parking would serve 54 cars, with storage for 200 bicycles.

The triangular site at Market and Barnes Avenue is a half-acre sitting east of the Swedish Ballard medical campus.

Now in an early design phase, the development would make for a unique retail spot, according to Preston Walls, founder and CEO of Walls Property.

“We purchased the first parcel of land about 17 years ago and have been steadily assembling more properties at the site,” Walls told the Business Journal. “There are four parcels total. It’s a tricky block.”

His firm filed a master plan application in November. The project isn’t expected to break ground for a couple of years.

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If estimates hold — Seattle leads the nation in rising construction costs — the cost would work out to about $200,000 per unit.

While some small buildings would be demolished, a one-story, 7,100-square-foot building occupied by The Monkey Bridge restaurant and the medical clinics can continue to operate for now.

Two mixed-use projects nearby are slated to add 420 homes to the neighborhood, according to the Business Journal.

In December 2022, NASH Holland, based in Vancouver, Wash., bought an acre at 2318 NW Market Street, where the developer plans to build a seven-story complex.

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Across the intersection, locally based Deal Investments has filed plans for an eight-story, 180-unit apartment building at the former site of The Market Arm pub at 2401 NW Market Street.

Walls Property Group, which manages a portfolio of 75 buildings valued at more than $300 million, is developing a 55-unit complex at 1446 NW 53rd Street, according to the Business Journal. It’s the first new project in Washington to use Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy + Resiliency financing, or C-PACER.

— Dana Bartholomew