Snohomish county WA - Mixed use Office - conversion to residential?

[Brian Hughes]

Hi All - 

There is a mixed use commercial office building for sale in Snohomish county,   WA.     Its mostly office space but has several residential apartments.   the office portion is vacant as are some of the apartments.    The overall building condition is not terrible having been local offices of a well known national charity up until recently.    Location is in an urban residential area.    I'm very familiar with the rental market around there having one of my properties on the same block.

Is there anybody on this forum who has direct experience with "change of use" or adaptive reuse of space?    Specifically conversion of the commercial portions of this building to apartments.   I know "change of use" frequently triggers major expenses like seismic retrofits, insulation and fire code updates.   Its not just a matter of rearranging dividing walls plumbing and electrical.  

[Kristine Ann]

Since no one with direct experience answered yet...I don't have direct experience but saw someone else go through the initial evaluation period. They didn't end up getting the property after the research because the cost wasn't worth it at the time.

Call the code enforcement guy when he's in the office or actually walk into his office when you know he's there. That way you can hear it directly from the horse's mouth what the major differences would be. If he's never in the office, you can talk to the secretary in the office and they might be able to help you with some information. 

After you talk to the code guy, you'll of course need an architect to write up professional plans that you can submit for the permits.

[Brian Hughes]

Thanks @Kristine yeah If it looks like I might make a run at this place (longshot as it is) I should and will contact the city planning department and see what they say about it.   The city is pretty pro housing especially close to the urban core as this property is.   So hopefully they might be somewhat supportive.  Though I suppose many people would rather have new construction townhouses or a 3 or 4 story apartment project on the site.   Those are already going up only a couple blocks closer to downtown.