Published March 2001

Investor spends millions
to restore Hewitt

By Kathy Day and Kate Reardon
Herald Writers

Craig Dieffenbach looks at Hewitt Avenue in downtown Everett and sees history.

The man who recently spent more than $4 million to purchase six properties on Hewitt and another on Colby Avenue also sees families and couples walking along the tree-lined street on their way to lively restaurants, clubs and boutiques.

It’s hard to stop him from talking about his ideas, and you can almost sense his anguish at seeing “buildings that are just sitting there.”

“Everett is a dream project. There’s no other city with a core so rundown, that has been ignored, with so many beautiful buildings,” Dieffenbach said last month during a visit to Rainier Valley’s Columbia City neighborhood.

Business people and officials in the south Seattle neighborhood say he served as a catalyst for changing a drug- and crime-infested area into a place that attracts locals and visitors to its restaurants and art and music events and has given a venue to local artists.

He wants to do the same on Hewitt, filling it with businesses that complement each other and keep people coming back.

To accomplish that, he has spent the past six months wheeling and dealing to buy as many of Hewitt’s buildings as he can, and he’s still at it. While he continues to be active in Columbia City, he’s spending more and more time in Everett and has opened an office above the Cosmopolitan Theater, one of his recent acquisitions. They include:

— The building at 2011 Hewitt Ave. that houses the Turner’s and Alligator Soul restaurants.

— The theater, which could be relocated, and its 15 apartments, at 1908 Hewitt Ave.

— Jack’s Men’s Shop, 1820 Hewitt Ave., two adjacent storefronts and 13 apartments above them.

— The Horseshoe Saloon, formerly the Firehouse Cafe, at 1805 Hewitt Ave.

— The Hodges Building, 1820 Hewitt Ave., home to an attorney’s office and 38 apartments.

— A former teen dance club at 1711 Hewitt Ave.

— He also bought the former Jay Jacobs building, also known as the Stiger property, at 2814 Colby Ave.

Dieffenbach also is waiting to close on a deal for the Walsh-Platt building on the corner of Rucker and Hewitt avenues, which would bring his purchases to nearly $5 million. The antique mall there now would stay, he said.

His arrival downtown has been met with mixed feelings and rumors. Residents wonder what this outsider who lives in Seattle is up to.

Dieffenbach and his real estate agents, Dennis Wagner of Skyline Properties and Jack Shannon of Coldwell Banker Bain, approached every property owner they could along the west end of Hewitt. Some, like Lloyd Wold who owns the Seattle Lighting building, said they rejected “the nibbles.”

Others, like Jack Baker, didn’t. He sold his Jack’s Men’s Shop building to Dieffenbach. Their dealings, he said, were amicable but left him wondering about Dieffenbach’s plans.

“Every day it seems to change,” Baker said.

Those changing ideas have some people concerned.

“I understand why people are uneasy,” said Maikoc Winkler, coordinator for Southeast Effective Development in Seattle, who worked with Dieffenbach in Columbia City. As she sat in Salumeria on Hudson, a combination restaurant and cook shop bustling with a lunchtime crowd, she added, “It may just be that he’s more upfront and open than people are used to.”

The timeliness of Dieffenbach’s purchases with the city’s announcement of a possible events center in the area raised questions for some.

Had he received advance word of the city’s prime site for the project on two blocks bounded by Hewitt Avenue and Wall Street between Broadway and Oakes Avenue?

No way, says Dieffenbach. He said he learned about it after he already had bought some of the land and was in the process of closing the deal on the theater.

That’s when city officials called and “asked me what I was doing,” he said.

He closed the deal on the theater building but agreed to drop pending agreements on other parcels between Broadway and Oakes Avenue.

And he recently said he has agreed that if the city needs the theater site he will sell it to them and donate a portion of the proceeds back to the city “as a goodwill gesture.” He also wants to purchase at least one of the luxury box suites at the events center — with a preliminary price tag of $25,000 — if the project happens.

The reason he’s here, he said, is that he’s “into restoring Hewitt.”

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