Healy's 12-page PDF also gives an overview of Vulcan's current and upcoming projects. Unfortunately the amenity, tenant, housing option slides continue Vulcan's creepy censorship of non-Vulcan properties. (Their Neighborhood Map conveniently omits places like AMLI and Neptune).

Brownfields redevelopment is of particular interest in SLU due to pre-EPA (and some ongoing) industrial activity in the area, such as the "dry cleaning solvents, hydrocarbons, and hydraulic fluid" that Vulcan cleaned up at the New Richmond Laundry for Alley24.

The Stroupe Condo Blog got a hold of a letter from Vulcan in which they told pre-sale buyers at Enso they will be reducing purchase prices and home owner dues on homes already under contract.

It makes a lot of sense. Obviously, committed buyers will be happy to hear the news, but the announcement was really targeted toward pre-sale buyers who were considering walking away from a losing investment. If Vulcan can convince the majority of the pre-sale buyers to close at Enso, they'll avoid converting another building with high-end finishes to apartments which means they'll come out ahead even with the price reductions.

See the full letter after the jump.

Greetings from the Enso team,

We would like to take a moment to provide you with an Enso update.

With Enso nearing completion, we are committed to working with you to make it possible to close and move into your new home. As a result, we will be offering all our Enso pre-sale buyers who purchased in 2007/08 and early 2009 a reduced purchase price on the home you already have in contract. We also will be reducing home owner assessments based on lower anticipated operating costs forecast in an updated budget.

Starting in mid-June, our sales team will contact you with more details about the reduction. Because we will be working closely with each of our pre-sale buyers, the closing time frame for your Enso home will take a bit longer than otherwise planned. Thank you for you patience during this process.

For planning purposes, we currently expect homeowner orientations to begin the first week of August, and anticipate first closings to begin late in August and continue through September. In advance of closing, you will receive a 30-day closing notice that will include your proposed homeowner orientation and close date as well as more detailed information on the closing and move-process.

Thank you again for your commitment to Enso and being part of the South Lake Union community. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our sales team at 206-264-4966.

Best Wishes,
The Enso team

Vulcan took another swath at Veer Lofts' prices today. They're bound and determined to sell this project out, something they couldn't quite manage to accomplish at Rollin Street.

This time around they're dangling out a price of $395,000 for one of the full lofts on the sixth floor. Tempted?

If you're like me, you've been wondering what is happening to Rollin Street. Well, the verdict is in, and they have decided to go apartment. Here's the post from urbnlivn.

I had a feeling this was going to happen.

I feel bad for those few who did have their hearts set on moving in, but hopefully with the way that the market currently is, this will tend to a much better option for them in the long run.

I was expecting generic park benches and planters, but you have to give Vulcan – and whoever the landscape architect is – props for thinking outside the box.

Three mock ships are now pointing their bows toward Lake Union in a nod to the area's maritime heritage.

I'm looking forward to the mini-park's completion.

Decades from now, will Amazon.com's headquarters in South Lake Union will likely be looked upon as the decisive tipping point in this rapidly changing neighborhood? 

While that question will take years to discover, amazon.com's presence in the neighborhood will be enormous.

Today, both Amazon.com and Vulcan celebrated the groundbreaking for its multiple buildings down the corridor of Terry and Boren with honored guests, Gov. Gregoire, Mayor Nickels, Council woman Jan Drago, and an executive from Capital Hill Housing. The lunch-time event was hosted by Ada Healey, Vice-President of Real Estate for Vulcan.

The shining sun seemed appropriate for the amount of enthusiasm and optimism in the room. Naturally, there was gratitude for hundreds of new jobs, LEED designed buildings, money for affordable housing, and the largest online retailer in the world setting up shop surrounded by retail. Surely this is an incredible blessing for both the city of Seattle and the state of Washington. 

As to how it will change... (more)

Ballard based nonprofit healthcare group PATH will be moving into Vulcan's new 2201 Westlake building in January 2010.  They signed a letter of intent to lease 110,000 of the 300,000 square feet available.

PATH, which originally went by Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, said its goal is to "create sustainable, culturally relevant solutions that enable communities worldwide to break long-standing cycles of poor health."

Initially Microsoft was signed up to lease the entire space, but backed away from the deal a few months ago.

According to the Seattle Times article, the other South Lake Union health-related organizations helped lead them to our neck of the woods:

PATH said in a prepared statement that it was drawn to South Lake Union partly by the presence of other health-related enterprises in the neighborhood, including the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, Seattle Children's Research Institute, the University of Washington's biotechnology and medical research hub, the Fred Hutchinson...

According to this permit application accepted by the DPD in early March, Vulcan has altered its plans for the triangle-shaped lot where 9th Ave bisects Denny and Westlake.

We wondered aloud back in February how Vulcan was going to lease all of Enso's retail in this market. Now they have 3,000 sq. ft. less to worry about.

The 2-story, glass-walled, green-roofed Kenney Pavillion is no more. In its place, a pocket park.

It'll be small, but Denny Triangle needs all the green space it can get—like the nearby 9,000 sq. ft. Enterprise Rent-A-Car lot under consideration for acquisition by Seattle Parks.

In a bid to hit the 70% pre-sold requirement – something Rollin Street has no chance of doing – Enso has announced special “pre-opening” pricing on several 1-bedroom units ranging in size from 687 to 979 sq ft:

#504 - $350,000
#1004 - $375,000
#1304 - $385,000
#710 - $435,000
#910 - $445,000
#1310 - $474,000
#1009 - $485,000
#1309 - $499,000

Vulcan is also offering up to $8,500 in closing costs, no homeowner dues until December 2010 and a $500 donation to a SLU non-profit made in the buyer’s name.

Enso did much better than Rollin Street in pre-sales which were quoted at 80 out of 100 units in May '08. Obviously some of those purchases have fallen out, and who knows how many of the remaining pre-sale buyers can close or would even want to close now that the units are worth much less than the amount on the contract.

Hat tip: The Seattle Condo Blog

In a note sent out yesterday afternoon, Vulcan told buyers at Rollin Street they had no new information and would be stalling until the end of the month.

When we last contacted you about Rollin Street's closing delay, we promised an update within 3 weeks.  Since then, we have continued to work to understand how the new Fannie Mae pre-sale guidelines will ultimately affect the property and our buyers.  We would like to thank you for your patience and to let you know that we are still working through a number of issues to have a full understanding of these regulatory changes and their ultimate impact.  We will be in touch again before the end of the month with a clear course of action.

Again, we appreciate your patience during this process, and apologize that we don't have more information at this time.

The triangle lot on the corner of Westlake and Denny has been cleared of construction waste and office trailers, and now there sits a fenced off patch of dirt.

Kenney Pavillion, the glass-walled 2-story 3,000 sq ft cornerstone of the Enso project, is meant to fill the patch of dirt, eventually.

What's interesting is that this phase of Enso's construction comes right as Microsoft announced plans to open its own branded retail stores (Seattle Times).

If you're unfamiliar with the backstory on Enso, Microsoft was slated to occupy all 300,000 sq ft of the project's office space until they dropped out of negotiations in January due to the economy. Before talks fell out, rumor had it Microsoft would also open a flagship retail store in it's hometown in addition to absorbing the office portion. This seems a lot less likely now.

So what will take Microsoft's place, at least in the retail sense? According to Vulcan's retail fact sheet, the triangle-shaped Kenney Pavillion is vented for restaurant use. Another restaurant... (more)

Last week we gave an account of a group of Rollin Street buyers who were worried about closing on their units and have been largely kept in the dark leading up to their March 15th close date. 

Today, we obtained a letter from a Vulcan representative to buyers at Rollin Street (see below). It appears Vulcan has been forced to address the issue of their buyers' lack of financing due to the possibility of a new Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac rule that would make it even harder (read near impossible) for buyers to obtain financing.

As a result of the new rule, Vulcan has pushed back the close date one month to April 15th, and are scrambling to find a workable solution within the next 2-3 weeks. I am hearing more and more from interested observers that this project could end up going luxury apartments, but it's still hearsay at this point. It certainly will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

With the completion of Rollin Street quickly approaching, we wanted to give you an update on the project's status....

A Seattle Times column about a man’s costly failed attempt to buy a South Lake Union condo evoked an estimated 300 reader comments, e-mails and calls to the paper.

Nearly all of the responses beseeched Vulcan to refund the buyer’s earnest money—something they’ve been unwilling to do, and a stance they continue to defend. Here’s a piece of Danny Westneat’s follow-up to Sunday’s column:

Vulcan spokesman David Postman says the company in fact goes out of its way to help struggling buyers qualify for loans. But barring that, Vulcan is entitled to the money.

"There was nothing in your column that would make us rethink our position," he said.

Fair enough. Would it help if I write some more of them?

Talk about a PR nightmare. Does Vulcan not realize they have a good deal of condos left to sell, and more than a handful of lots yet to be developed? A show of good faith would go a long way.

Speaking of such, a group of Rollin Street buyers met last night at a coffee shop... (more)

There's an article in today's Seattle Times detailing the account of one would-be Veer Lofts buyer who ended up being denied a loan from Countrywide and failed to receive any clemency from Vulcan–and now he's lost his life savings.

Sorry, Countrywide then told Cohn. We can't give you that loan anymore.

He's got the same job, with a slightly higher salary. Yet today he can't get any loan. The reality is that his condo would eat up a bit more than half his take-home pay, considered A-OK in the go-go days of 2006 but unacceptable today.

And now Vulcan — technically the Veer Lofts Venture LLC — won't give him his $14,000 deposit back.

In letters to the state, which tried to mediate this dispute, both Countrywide and Vulcan said tough luck. Times change. If you can't get a loan then you've defaulted.

Cohn's story isn't uncommon. The majority of the six Veer units that went on special a week ago are pre-sales that could not close.

A number of pre-sale buyers at Rollin Street (another Vulcan condo... (more)

We wrote in December about $100K price drops on the 2-story lofts at Veer, now it appears the 1-story flats and flexi-lofts have come down in price a substantial amount as well.

The front page of Veer's website now highlights "a special limited time offer" on 6 units which have been priced under $300,000, if you close before February 22, 2009. But that's not all, folks! They're also throwing in all of these incentives—plus the kitchen sink:

• Pay no homeowner dues until September 1st, 2010!
• All your closing costs paid up to $7450!
• A $1,000 Ikea gift certificate!
• A 1-year membership to Rain Fitness, a short two blocks from Veer!
• Two $500 gift certificates on Alaska Airlines

From my novice point of view, it seems like these units are now priced right around where they oughtta be and ought to have been. In fact, I think these are the prices from the very early pre-sale days (~2006). You have to feel for the folks that jumped in during the last year or so when similar units were going for $... (more)

Vulcan, Paul Allen's privately-held investment company, let go 50 employees today from a staff of 650.

Company spokesman David Postman, formerly a political blogger/journalist for the axe-wielding Seattle Times, has told various press outlets that the layoffs were the result of certain projects being eliminated or postponed, though he declined to say which ones.

Interestingly, Postman submitted that the real estate division was unaffected by the layoffs. This is likely because the division is up to their necks as it is with the sales, leasing and development efforts focused on South Lake Union.

I'm not sure if it was ever officially announced, but virtually everyone had heard the rumors and believed Microsoft was a lock for 2201 Westlake, Vulcan's mixed-use development featuring 134 condo units and 300,000 sq. ft. of class "A" office space.

All that changed today, however, when Microsoft called off negotiations to lease all 300,000 sq. ft. "because of the economic situation and the changing market conditions", according to company spokesman Lou Gellos (Source: P-I).

This is not good news for Vulcan. Doubly so, as those Microsofties would be prime candidates for "Enso Living" or the nearby flats and lofts at Rollin Street and Veer. Vulcan will find it difficult to rope another tenant as the once tight office market in Seattle has loosened up considerably due to the WaMu takeover and a lot of new construction—some of which is right next door to 2201 Westlake (see West 8th, 1918 8th).