A notorious downtown Tacoma landmark, repurposed and rehabilitated as condos and upscale commercial spaces, is in new hands.
The Mecca Building, for three decades the site of downtown’s most visible adult bookstore and theater, was purchased in a foreclosure sale Friday by the California lender that provided the funds for its rehabilitation.
Owens Mortgage Investment Fund bought the four-story structure at 755 Broadway for $3.61 million at a foreclosure sale outside the Pierce County Courthouse.
Owens lent the building’s developer, the Gintz Group, $3.5 million to buy and remodel the building five years ago.
The building for 30 years housed the Mecca Theater and an associated adult bookstore and peep show gallery. The Gintz Group bought the structure in August 2006 for $2 million from the wife of Tacoma adult entertainment entrepreneur Jerry Holt.
The family-owned Gintz Group remodeled the old theater into 12 residential units and two retail spaces. None of the residential units sold, although the Gintz Group leased several.
With its foreclosure sale, the Mecca joins a long line of pre-recession Tacoma-area condo developments that failed to fulfill their promise once the economic crisis killed home sales nationwide. Among those projects are the Esplanade on the Foss Waterway, the Commencement in Ruston, 505 Broadway and the Walker north of downtown, and Hanna and Chelsea Heights near Wright Park.
Former Gintz Group Chief Operating Officer Ron Gintz said that without substantial sales, the real estate developer couldn’t meet its payments to Owens. The project went into foreclosure earlier this year.
The Mecca’s failure and the forced demolition of the Gintz-owned Luzon Building downtown pushed the Gintz Group into insolvency, he said. The City of Tacoma razed the Luzon Building at South 13th Street and Pacific Avenue in 2009 after city inspectors deemed it a safety hazard.
The Gintz Group had bought the building with the intent of repairing and rehabilitating it, but they couldn’t find financing for the project. The building was one of two remaining on the West Coast designed by famed Chicago architects Daniel Burnham and John Root.
The Gintz Group still owns the land on which the building stood, but the city has filed liens on that property for the $600,000 cost of its demolition.
Bob Bridge, an executive with Owens, said he plans to visit Tacoma later this month to inspect the Mecca and to talk with real estate brokers about the prospects of turning a profit on the structure.
“We don’t know what we’re going to be doing yet,” he said. “We’re still considering our options.”
John Gillie: 253-597-8663 john.gillie@thenewstribune.com
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