(The Center Square) – The chic Columbia Tower Club in Seattle has shut down after 41 years, another negative development for a downtown that has struggled in recent years with fewer office workers and retail store closures.
Several banquets on Thursday night were the closing menu for the club on the 75th and 76th floors, with breathtaking views of Elliott Bay and the city’s skyline.
The restaurant and bar area, where thousands of business deals have been made over the last four decades, closed a week earlier than expected on Friday, April 24, due to staffing issues.
Most of the club furniture had already been packed, and the main 75th-floor space was bare, a Center Square reporter observed on Thursday.
A local official of Invited Clubs, the Dallas-area company that owns The Columbia Tower Club, said business was down at the club because of a nearly 40% office vacancy rate in downtown Seattle.
He also noted that downtown never recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic and that remote work remains a big part of Seattle’s tech community, meaning more workers stay in their homes and apartments rather than socializing.
The official asked not to be quoted because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.
He said the club’s lease was up with the owners of The Columbia Tower, Seattle’s tallest building. The official said that club management in Texas had decided that the downtown business climate was too uncertain to renew its lease.
A representative of Invited Clubs in Irving, Texas, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the office building’s owners, Gaw Capital Advisor USA.
Invited is still operating a second, smaller club in the Seattle South Lake Union area called The Collective, along with skyscraper clubs in Dallas, Houston and Los Angeles.
For Ricardo Ruvalcaba, the memories were many. He sat in a conference room on Thursday night at the club’s last banquet. Alongside him was his wife, Andrea.
“I met her in 1996, right after I joined the club,” said the building contractor. “This club has been a large part of my life.”
He attributed part of the club’s recent problems to the changing nature of business in the connected high-tech world.
“Back in the day, this was a very social club; people would come into the dining room, there would be a live jazz band playing, and people would all be dressed up for a nice dinner.”
He said now many people order food from delivery services and business deals are done over coffee rather than elaborate lunches and dinners.
Jose Fernandez, another guest at the banquet, had been a member for ten years.
He said the club never fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic and that some dining spaces had been converted to co-working spaces as businesspeople became more focused on having a place to work remotely rather than dining.
The iconic Columbia Tower office building sits right across the street from Seattle City Hall, where new Mayor Katie Wilson has said new business taxes may be on the offering.
The city already has several business taxes that apply to larger businesses.
Amazon, Seattle’s second-largest employer, has moved around 10,000 jobs out of Seattle in the past several years because of the taxes, as have dozens of smaller businesses, according to business leaders such as Downtown Seattle Association President and CEO Jon Scholes.
Fernandez said, hopefully, the club will open again at some point under new ownership.
“The views are so beautiful here,” he said.
Fernandez said it would be a shame if that didn’t happen.
