State Puts Tacoma’s Rhodes Center Back on the Market

Downtown Tacoma’s Rhodes Center is for sale, again.

The state-owned office complex, which the government bought in 1996 and tried to sell in 2008, is headed for the open market with an asking price of $25 million. It’s the priciest of a handful of properties the state is trying to shed to help reduce the projected budget deficit.

The complex is two office buildings and a parking garage, all connected by skybridge, along South 11th Street between Market and Broadway. 

However, many of the state tenants in the Rhodes don’t have traditional 10-year commercial leases. Many of the state leases are two-year renewables, tied to the state’s budgeting process.

The Rhodes Center comprises the former Rhodes Department Store on Broadway, built in 1903; a building on Market Street and a 1969 parking garage.  After Rhodes left downtown for the Tacoma Mall, the building became the University of Puget Sound Law School.

UPS then sold the building to Seattle University, which moved the law school to Seattle. The state bought the building in 1996, renovated it in 1999, and tried to sell it to the Tacoma Housing Authority in 2008.

That sale ultimately didn’t close because of THA’s concerns about deferred maintenance.

According the the State, The Market Street building needs a new roof; dozens of heat pumps replaced; and the lights use bulbs that aren’t made anymore.

Ground floor retail space on Broadway has been vacant for years, though the Sundance Cafe recently opened.  (Tacoma News Tribune)  READ MORE