Seattle’s Fort Lawton, Now an Unusual Offering for Home Buyers

Amber Fouts for The Wall Street Journal

Neal and Baird Nuckolls were taking a long walk in Seattle last year when they came across a cluster of 13 buttercup-yellow Colonial-style houses smack in the middle of a 500-acre city park.

The century-old homes were surrounded by dense woods, vast meadows, 2 miles of beach on the Puget Sound and views of the snow-capped peaks of the Olympic Peninsula. And although in a public park, there were Private Property signs around the homes.

The site, it turned out, was a former military base called Fort Lawton. And the homes were for sale, with asking prices between $1.8 million and $3 million.

But purchasing required some unusual steps. Buyers went through a lottery to pick their home and couldn’t see the interiors under construction before committing. Also, to expedite the upgrade and contain costs, the developers offered only two interior-design choices (with some variations) for the renovations. Some buyers also saw a potential drawback in living in a park, where they might face a constant parade of people walking by.

A model home decorated by the developers at Fort Lawton will be one of the six houses to go on sale later this month.

Amber Fouts for The Wall Street Journal

Still, the couple, who had recently left the “increasingly intense” environment of the San Francisco Bay Area after nearly 30 years, was undeterred.

“It was a leap of faith,” says Mr. Nuckolls, 55 years old, a retired software engineer who takes 14-mile walks since he and his family moved into their new home on the site in December. They had rented in the city before buying the $2 million property.

Living in the four-bedroom, three-bath, 4,000-square-foot home is “like stepping back in time,” adds Ms. Nuckolls, also 55, owner of a publishing company.

The Fort Lawton military base was established in 1900 as a coastal defense unit. It later became an infantry post and then a processing center for soldiers.

The fort’s history has a tragic chapter. During World War II, it was used as a camp for German and Italian POWs. A violent conflict there in 1944 left one Italian prisoner dead. That incident led to a court-martial of 43 African-American soldiers, with many found guilty of rioting and two found guilty of manslaughter. Years later, the U.S. Army Board for Correction of Military Records determined the trial was severely flawed and all the convictions were overturned.

The city of Seattle later took over the land and in 1972 established the 500-acre Discovery Park. The houses, Navy-owned, eventually were rented, starting in 2012.

The three smaller homes at Fort Lawton are in a neighborhood called Montana Circle. They were built in 1900, except for four that went up in the 1930s. They sold for between $799,000 and $1.2 million.

Amber Fouts for The Wall Street Journal

Then in February 2015, Vancouver, B.C.-based Rise Properties paid $9.5 million to the U.S. Navy and a private developer that had acquired a share of the property for all 26 homes on the site. These included the 13 Colonials, in Officer’s Row, and 13 smaller units down the hill, in a spot called Montana Circle.

Historic regulations required the developers to leave the exteriors and landscaping mostly unchanged. But the developers were allowed to replace carriage houses with two-car garages.

Inside, the company spent $300,000 to $800,000 on each home, in a renovation that included replacing radiators with underfloor radiant heat, combining bedrooms, refinishing original maple and oak floors, restoring millwork, and putting in new bathrooms and new kitchens with quartz countertops and stainless-steel Bosch and Miele appliances.

The colorful fireplace tiles and built-in cabinets stayed, as did the big single-pane windows.

Scott Colville and Jeannette Mayes in their renovated kitchen, plan to get married at the house in July. They live there with their four children, ages 5, 8, 10 and 13, from previous marriages.

Amber Fouts for The Wall Street Journal

The developer put seven of the Officer’s Row houses, including the one bought by the Nuckolls, on the market last year. They sold for between $1.8 million to $3 million. The Montana Circle homes sold for $799,000 and $1.2 million. The final six Officer’s Row homes will go on the market later this month, priced from $2 million to $3 million. Two houses that caught on fire during renovations are being rebuilt.

The area looks much the same as it did and yet very different, says Bob Doll, 81, who lived with his wife and family in an Officer’s Row home when he was a Navy commander in 1978, and again in 1990. There were military barracks at one point that held about 400 men, plus rifle ranges and stables. Interiors were sparse.

Last month, Mr. Doll was visiting his daughter, Kathleen Kapla, an attorney, and her husband, James, a civil engineer, who now own a house there. (Ms. Kapla remembers racing around on bikes, and buying Archie comics and Cokes at the commissary as a kid.)

The Kaplas bought their 4,000-square-foot, four-bedroom house for $1.799 million in September and moved in with their two sons, living for several months with no neighbors.

Fort Lawton is a 20-minute bus ride to downtown—close yet quiet enough for Scott Colville, 43. He lives in a five-bedroom, 4½ bathroom, 6,656-square-foot house that he and his fiancée, Jeannette Mayes, 43, bought for $3.75 million.

“There’s no negative noise like traffic, buses and car alarms. It’s all happy feelings,” says Mr. Colville, a Microsoft manager.

The couple bought their home despite having no hard date for when it would be ready and no say in the design except for the color scheme. The first time they saw the renovated interior was when it was time to move in—which they did in December with their four children, from previous marriages, ages 5, 8, 10 and 13.

Mila Tatyanin, 33, says she seldom leaves the area, preferring long walks with her 7-month-old daughter, Yeva, and visits from friends. She and her husband, Victor, 39, a software engineer at Oracle, bought their three-bedroom house in Montana Circle for $1.2 million in April. Along with the views and the lack of bustle, what they like about Fort Lawton is that no matter how much Seattle grows, the park won’t change.

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