Selig plans apartments high above old Federal Reserve building

Developer Martin Selig is joining the list of those proposing to build high-altitude residences in downtown Seattle office towers, adding 12 floors of apartments on top of his earlier proposal for a 36-story structure at 1015 Second Ave.

The 48-story, 664-foot-high tower, which will be discussed Dec. 15 by a city design-review board, would incorporate the landmark Federal Reserve Building that Selig bought for $16 million in a government auction this year.

Other mixed-use projects are also betting on heavy demand to live higher and higher on downtown’s skyline:

• Seattle-based Wright Runstad & Co. received a city permit last week to build a 59-story office tower with 214 apartments — almost 20 percent more than it proposed last year — on its upper floors at 1301 Fifth Ave. on the site of Rainier Square.

• Miami-based Crescent Heights, a national mixed-use developer, is seeking permits to build a 101-story tower, with the upper 83 floors dedicated to about 1,200 residences.

• Seattle-based Urban Visions, which already has a 35-story apartment tower under construction at Second Avenue and Pike Street, has proposed an 880-foot-high tower at 888 Second Ave. crowned by about 160 luxury residences.

But Selig says none of those projects influenced his decision to add apartments above his evolving office project.

“I believe there’s a demand for it,” he said. “You’ve got nothing in your way all the way around. It’s located in a location where there’s no height limit.”

So why just 12 floors of apartments? The 48-story total is the capacity of the elevator shafts in the original Federal Reserve Building, Selig said.

“I’m not trying to reach the record height limit,” he said. “That doesn’t interest me.”

It’s just one of a half-dozen projects the 78-year-old developer is juggling.

Selig closed a deal last week to buy the Firestone auto-repair shop in South Lake Union for $17.5 million. The repair garage, which was built in 1929, is near the headquarters of Amazon.com and Group Health.

Selig said he plans to transform the low-rise property at the northeast corner of Westlake Avenue North and Harrison Street into a 180-foot-high building, with 190,000 square feet of offices and biotech lab space and 30,000 square feet of retail.

Though the site’s zoning allows a 160-foot-high structure, Selig said he will be able to build higher once the city’s new linkage fee supporting affordable housing goes into effect. He expects to get additional height and square feet by proposing a structure that meets the energy-efficiency standards of the city’s Living Building program.

The retail portion would have a ground floor and a mezzanine level, with natural light peeking in through restored second-floor windows.

“That’s Main and Main Street right there,” Selig quipped. “We’ve had enough calls from retailers to fill it up twice over.”