Downtown Seattle’s Liggett Building, a century-old Gothic-clad tower at 1424 Fourth Ave, is being teed up for a major lifestyle change, with developers floating a plan to carve roughly 93 apartments out of its mostly empty office floors. If it pencils out, the landmarked high-rise could trade daytime desk traffic for round-the-clock residents in the Pike-Pine corridor.
According to The Seattle Times, Graham Baba Architects and a firm identified as Current Development have filed preliminary paperwork with the city to turn the upper stories into about 93 units, with optional basement parking. The Daily Journal of Commerce reports that First Citizens Bank now owns the property after foreclosing on LBA Realty, which paid roughly $58 million for the building in 2019. Together, the early plans signal another attempt to fill downtown towers with residents instead of just office workers.
Historic Shell, Apartment-Friendly Bones
Completed in 1927, the Liggett sports ornate Gothic terra cotta and a richly detailed lobby that developers say they want to keep intact. Broker materials and the building brochure describe 10 stories organized around compact U-shaped floor plates and an interior light shaft. According to the building listing, those pre-World War II proportions can make vintage office towers easier to convert to apartments than newer, wider office floors that are tougher to slice into livable units.
The building is already on Seattle’s lists of designated landmarks and historic registries, so any substantial changes will need to clear preservation review. That status protects the character of the exterior and key interior spaces, even as the upper floors are reimagined for residential life.
Tax Break Tries To Make the Numbers Work
Seattle adopted a sales-and-use tax deferral in February 2025 that can defer or waive the 10.3% sales tax on conversion construction costs if projects reserve at least 10% of new units at or below 80% of area median income. City leaders have pitched the program as a way to nudge borderline office-to-housing deals into feasibility and coax more people back into the downtown core, especially where long-term office demand no longer justifies keeping floors vacant.
Preservation Meets Affordability
That incentive comes with strings, and so does the building’s historic status. Any conversion will have to meet affordability targets while respecting landmark rules, a mix that can give architects, preservationists and lenders plenty to debate. Broker materials describe a plan to keep defining interior character while threading new kitchens, bathrooms, and building systems through a protected shell, a process that typically calls for some careful structural and mechanical gymnastics…