| After four decades in business and half-dozen mega downtown development projects, Pine Street Group principal and managing partner Matt Griffin is still thinking big. There are grand plans for Via6, the two-tower, 654-unit luxury apartment project going up on 6th Avenue between Lenora and Blanchard. |
| Via6 rendered by Studio/216. The $200M project, on track for completion in February '13 and preleasing this summer, will house 16k SF of ground-floor retail. At street-level, Matt envisions a resto-pub ("a place to sit and read a book or have a beer with friends"), grocery, and bike shop with locker rooms and storage for 250 sets of wheels. Biking is important to Matt and his wife Evelyne, who have twice taken a year off and pedaled themselves through more than 50 countries. His old touring bike has more than 50,000 miles on it and his city bike has over 120,000 miles, and he's been ?car free? for about seven years. |
| Most of the residences at Via6 will be in the neighborhood of 700 SF and are expected to rent for about $2k per month. (Which doesn't seem so bad if, like Matt, you don't have a car payment.) Because square footage is the only thing about the project that might seem somewhat small, special attention was paid to floor plans, which were designed to make residents feel they're living large (nine-foot ceilings, stone countertops, and decks tend to help). "We basically believe it's more important to have the right space, than how much space," Matt says. |
| Its zoomed in close so you wouldn't be distracted by what must be very muscular legs. Pine Street Group's other accomplishments include the three-block, $500M redevelopment that included Pacific Place and the old Frederick & Nelson building, the 900k SF Russell Investments Center, and 300k SF SAM expansion (the latter done with Seneca Real Estate Group). They've contributed to the live/work/shop/play ecosystem that makes for a vibrant downtown. Still, a city needs constant attention, Matt tells us: "Downtowns are always fragile. You've got to keep working on them all the time." |
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