Old City Hall purchased for $5.25 million

The Old City Hall building in downtown Spokane has been sold for $5.25 million to a pair of investors who attended Gonzaga Law School together.

The investors, Nicholas Knapton and Jason Kettrick, have plans to renovate the 99,400-square-foot building at 221 N. Wall St., which sits on the same block as River Park Square and faces Riverfront Park.

The prime location is across the street from the newly completed ice ribbon in the park. It is also near the old Macy’s building, which has undergone an extensive renovation into apartments that is nearly complete.

The Old City Hall building was built in 1913 to replace the stately City Hall, which sat near where the Looff Carrousel is located. That building was demolished when Union Pacific railroad forced city offices off the site. The new building was seen as an inexpensive and temporary home for city government, “built so that it could be readily converted into a warehouse,” according to Robert Hyslop’s Spokane’s Building Blocks.

The city expected to stay in the building five years. Instead, it stayed there for 70 years until it moved to its current location in 1982 to the old Montgomery Ward Building.

The Old City Hall building was recently home to an Olive Garden restaurant, which closed three years ago.

Knapton, a lawyer and certified public accountant, is a principal in his namesake accounting firm that has offices in Spokane and Seattle. An office for the company will relocate to the building this month.

Kettrick is a construction and development lawyer with Seattle-based Carney Badley Spellman. According to the company’s website, Kettrick works as general counsel for companies involved in engineering, construction, development and finance. He once worked as an extern under Judge John Rossmeissl with the U. S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Washington.

Knapton and Kettrick and their families purchased the building through their company, Wall Street LLC, and hired Chris Bell and Jon Jeffreys with NAI Black as leasing agents for the building. The realty company will manage the property.

Spokane Teachers Credit Union financed the sale.