Fifteen Twenty-One Condo Tower Received International Recognition

Opus Northwest, today announced that its Fifteen Twenty-One Second Avenue condominium development in downtown Seattle received two honors at the 47th annual Gold Nugget Awards. At the awards ceremony, “the premier event at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference Fifteen Twenty-One Second Avenue won the top award for Outstanding Attached Project and Highrise for Sale, andreceived an award of merit in the category of Sustainable Residential Neighborhood.

The Gold Nugget Awards program honors creative achievements in architectural design and land-use planning for residential, commercial and industrial projects.

“Relevance keeps the Gold Nugget Awards at the forefront of design/planning competitions, as our 2009 winners demonstrate,” said Judging Chairman Peter Mayer of Peter M. Mayer Productions. “The Merits and Grand awards represent an amazing diversity of locales, projects and design and planning firms. Gold Nugget winners share one common denominator: excellence and innovation in addressing complex design/build issues.”

During a three-day judging process, a panel of eight industry professionals from across the country selected Award of Merit honorees and Grand Award winners from a field of hundreds of entries representing 14 Western states and international high-rise markets as far away as China and Dubai.

Judges acknowledged a long list of design innovations at Fifteen Twenty-One Second Avenue, including:

• The first ‘tall and skinny’ residential tower under a new zoning code (440 feet tall)
• Elimination of traditional terraces in favor of indoor/outdoor solariums
• Unobstructed views of Elliott Bay from almost every home (even those on the east side of the tower)
• Larger-format, two-bedroom homes averaging 1,950 square feet (twice the size of typical condos)
• The first luxury high-rise anticipated to achieve a silver LEED rating

All new concepts were exhaustively test-marketed during the tower’s design and were key differentiators leading to impressive sales statistics today. The project was designed by Seattle-based architectural firm Weber Thompson and Opus Architects & Engineers is the architect of record.

“We’re very proud of both the design and our ongoing market success,” said Andy Taber, Senior Real Estate Director for Opus Northwest -Seattle, who accepted the awards on behalf of his development team. “These acknowledgments reinforce the civic role that developers play, to challenge convention and to listen to the marketplace when designing new communities.”

Taber says with an average purchase price of more than $1.9 million, homes at Fifteen Twenty-One Second Avenue are bucking the trend of a regional housing market slowdown, which is more acute in higher price ranges. The project’s sellout pace since opening in January remains steady at one new home per week, bolstering its reputation as the most successful condominium on the West Coast. The development, near Pike Place Market, was also noted for contributing half of the top 25 residential sales closed in King County in recent months. To date, 81 of the 143 homes have closed with many more scheduled over the coming weeks and months.