The Old Rainier Brewery complex in SoDo, the sprawling 24-building campus topped by Seattle's iconic neon “R” sign visible from I-5, is back on the market for $29 million. The asking price marks a 17% discount from what the property sold for just last year, and comes with a campus that's almost entirely leased across its 95 tenant spaces.
A Steep Discount From Last Year's Sale
According to The Seattle Times, the property at 3100 Airport Way S. is being listed by Minneapolis-based commercial real estate mortgage banking firm Northmarq. The Seattle Times reports the complex was last sold for $35 million in 2025, meaning the new $29 million ask represents a notable step down in valuation over roughly a year. King County records cited by the paper valued the property at almost $24 million in 2026, down from nearly $28.8 million in 2025.
The campus spans 181,400 square feet and includes three available work lofts renting for between $1,000 and $3,425 a month, per the listing details reported by the Seattle Times. More than 23,400 square feet of unfinished space remains on-site, with potential for further conversion. Anchor tenants include the 20,000-square-foot Groove Universe and the 16,000-square-foot Little Red Day Spa, alongside businesses like drive-thru Lula Coffee Co. Rooftop signage and billboard leases on the property bring in $129,000 a year, according to the listing.
Decades of Environmental Cleanup and Capital Investment
Ownership has poured roughly $17 million into the complex over the years, the Seattle Times reports, including about $12 million spent on environmental remediation and another $5 million on roofs, sprinklers, and elevators. That remediation spending traces back to long-standing contamination concerns: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified exterior paint at the 4.6-acre Rainier Commons campus contaminated with high levels of PCBs, prompting EPA-supervised air, dust, and paint sampling and cleanup efforts that began around 2009.
The site's adaptive-reuse history dates back further still. Seattle-based Ariel Development bought the complex for $6 million in 2003 and launched a $10 million project, converting 140,000 square feet of former industrial space into live-work artist lofts, music rehearsal rooms, and creative offices, according to GlobeSt. Ariel picked up the property after previous owner Benaroya Cos. sold it following Rainier's 1999 plant closure, per the same outlet's reporting.
The Brewery's Roots Stretch Back to 1878
Rainier Beer traces its origins to 1878, first linked to A.B. Rabbeson's Washington Brewery before the brand was purchased in 1883 by John Kopp and Andrew Hemrich's Seattle Brewing and Malting Company, whose most popular product was Rainier itself. That company temporarily shuttered during Washington's statewide Prohibition in 1916, three years ahead of the national ban, according to background cited by PR Newswire. By 1904 the company had grown into the largest brewery west of the Mississippi, ranking sixth-largest in the world by 1912.
Fritz and Emil Sick purchased the company in 1930, and it became Sick's Rainier Brewing Company in 1957 before rebranding again as Rainier Brewing Company in 1970. Brewing at the SoDo site stopped in 1999, and the space underwent a revamp starting in 2008. The Rainier brand today is owned by Pabst Brewing Company, which now brews Rainier Beer in California.
The Neon Sign That Defines the Skyline
The building's most recognizable feature, its neon “R” sign, has its own separate story of near-loss and revival. The original sign was taken down in 2000 during Tully's Coffee's tenancy at the site and placed in the Museum of History and Industry, before an exact 1,100-pound replica built by Western Neon, with 235 lightbulbs per side, was reinstalled and illuminated in an October 2013 ceremony, per PR Newswire's account. The original red “R” had topped the building for nearly 50 years before it was briefly swapped for a green Tully's “T.”
That restoration is now marked annually with R-Day, a September community festival held at the site that draws thousands of attendees to celebrate the sign's 2013 return. The campus also once housed The Mountain Room, Rainier Beer's official brewpub and tasting hall from 1950 to 1999, which Tully's later converted into a barista training center before private operators reopened it in 2014 as The Factory Luxe event venue. Brewing briefly returned to the building in May 2010 when microbrewery Emerald City Beer Co. leased a beer lab tasting room inside the former lagering tanks, marking the first beer produced there since Pabst ended production in 1999.
Not To Be Confused With Georgetown's Original Brewery
Buyers and longtime Seattleites alike sometimes conflate the SoDo complex with the historic 1890s Original Rainier Brewery two miles south in Georgetown, at 5624–6004 Airport Way S. That separate 191,400-square-foot property is owned by ScanlanKemperBard and Recap Real Estate Investment, and was refinanced for $36.46 million in June 2022, according to JLL Capital Markets. Rainier's brewing operations actually moved from Georgetown to the SoDo location when production resumed in the 1930s.
The SoDo campus operates under a condominium ownership structure, meaning individual buildings within Rainier Commons have changed hands separately in recent years. A newer building on the complex's east side at 918 S. Horton St. sold for $29.2 million in January 2023, sold by an affiliate of EB-5 developer American Life, according to the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce. A storage building component at 3250 Airport Way S. sold for $35 million in April 2025 per King County property records, the trade publication reported, a transaction that directly preceded the current listing of the 3100 Airport Way S. parcel.
