What the Plan to Build a 101-Story Building Tells Us About the Future of Seattle

Are Columbia Center's days as top dog numbered? Charles Mudede

The plan to build a 101-story building tells us that the future really believes in Seattle. If the Crescent Heights tower is built, it will not only be the tallest building on the West Coast, and one of the tallest buildings in the United States, but it will also brazenly block Seattle's currently tallest building, the Columbia Center, from the city's west-facing iconic skyline. You will no longer see the Columbia Center while approaching downtown on a ferry. The Crescent Heights tower will be the new climax and core.

Crescent Heights is the name of the Miami-based developer that plans to build the tower in 2017. It has purchased a lot on Fourth Avenue and Columbia Street for $48.75 million, so they really mean business. As for the Columbia Center, it was sold to a Hong Kong investment company in early August for $711 million. Back in 2007, the building sold to Boston-based Beacon Capital Partners for $621 million, but then lost 40 percent of its value after the crash of 2008. Beacon then forced its creditors to do something Greece can't do today: restructure the debt to match the new economic reality.

All in all, the buildings represent a city that's more and more shaped and owned by non-local capital. Indeed, we are used to associating the kind of growth that's happening in Seattle with the kind that's happening in Asian and Gulf cities. The West no longer grows madly like this, no longer builds record-breaking anything.