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The Man Who Turned a Ballard Bank Into a Gym Was Forced Out of It in 2020

A Ballard building that was a saloon, a bank and a post office is now a gym. In 2020 its founder was forced out, and his six-story hotel was cancelled.

<h6>Seattle Fitness Magazine · 19 Sep 2026</h6><ul><li><strong>63</strong>canceled hotel rooms</li><li><strong>~1,175</strong>2011 class action members</li><li><strong>2</strong>pools</li></ul><h2>5301 Leary, 5232 Ballard: one property, two buildings</h2> <p><b>Olympic Athletic Club sits at 5301 Leary Ave NW in Ballard, open Monday through Friday from 5am to 11pm and weekends from 6am to 9pm.</b></p><p>Members swim laps, shoot free throws, lift weights. That address is not the whole story. Walk around the corner, to Ballard Avenue and Vernon Place, and the same property becomes 5232 Ballard Ave NW, the Matthes Block, a dark red brick landmark with rusticated masonry, on the National Register and inside the Ballard Avenue Landmark District since 1976.</p><p>One property. Two buildings, joined into a single complex. The gym&#x27;s Leary-facing side is a newer, non-historic annex. The Ballard Avenue side is the landmark. Only the annex was ever slated for demolition.</p> <h2>What the Matthes brothers built</h2> <p>The city&#x27;s own historic record puts construction in 1903, credited to brothers Oscar and Albin Matthes and financed by profits from their Old Home Saloon, which was already running before the new building went up. A Ballard Historical Society photo caption puts it in the 1890s instead. The date is disputed between them, and the city&#x27;s is the better sourced. Beaux Arts and Neoclassical in style, the Matthes Block started at two storeys and gained a third in 1920.</p><p>Dark red brick. Rusticated masonry. The kind of building that reads as a bank before anyone tells you it was one, and it was sometimes called the Elks Temple besides. Both the National Register listing and the Ballard Avenue Landmark District designation date to 1976. The city&#x27;s record even gives the building a name for what it eventually became, Olympic Athletic Club, with the switch to athletic-club use dated to 1987.</p> <h2>A bank vault, an Elks Lodge, and a post office under one roof</h2> <p><b>The sequence runs like this.</b></p><p>The Old Home Saloon came first, funding construction before 1903. Elks Lodge #827 took the upper floor starting around 1903. During Prohibition, the Ballard branch of the Dexter-Horton Bank moved in, and the Ballard Historical Society&#x27;s own walking tour notes that the entryway tiles still read Dexter-Horton today. A Westside Seattle piece from December 2009 reports that the vault still remains in the lower levels.</p><p>The post office came next, and the record on it is unusually precise: an archive photograph, dated in its own banner, shows postal workers posed under a sign reading U.S. POST OFFICE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, BALLARD STATION, AUGUST 14, 1935. A door in the same frame reads B.P.O.E. 827 MEMBERS ONLY. The Elks and the post office were sharing the building that day. A second Ballard Historical Society photograph documents postal staff again on 21 August 1940, five years after the first.</p> <h2>The Riggles turn a landmark into a gym</h2> <p><b>Jim and Debra Riggle bought the building in January 1980.</b></p><p>By 1987, per the city&#x27;s own record, it had become an athletic club. Westside Seattle&#x27;s 2007 history of Ballard already described the property in terms of its newest life, calling it &quot;the Ballard Avenue face of the Olympic Health Club.&quot; The gym that grew into the property kept the period detailing. The basketball court runs under dark wainscoting with medallion detailing, exposed brick on the upper walls, heavy exposed wood roof trusses overhead. The main weight floor has its own exposed brick, heavy timber trusses, an arched period window at the back, wood columns, industrial pendant lighting.</p><p>There are two pools and a hot tub, and the class schedule runs from cycling and yoga through Pilates, Les Mills Bodypump and bootcamp. Childcare runs out of Kids Korner, both locker rooms have steam rooms and saunas, and Olympic Spa operates as a partner. Kids Korner runs $9 an hour for up to two hours. A guest pass costs $20 for an adult, $5 to $15 for a child.</p> <h2>A lawsuit, a scheme, and a buyout</h2> <p>In November 2011, members holding lifetime memberships sold in the 1980s got letters saying a new owner would not honor them past December 31. Attorney Toby Marshall filed a class action that December on behalf of roughly 1,175 members. The case settled in March 2012: anyone who bought before 26 July 1987 kept a lifetime membership, anyone who bought after got 14 additional years, and the new owners covered the legal costs. John Lowrance had become a minority partner in the club that same year, 2011, when the Hotel Ballard development was added to the business.</p><p>In January 2016, KUOW reported a different fight: Riggle recruiting gym members to join the neighboring Salmon Bay Eagles Aerie #2141 and vote to sell the Eagles&#x27; contaminated lot at 5244 Leary Ave NW, for $2.4 million, to the club for a parking garage. Then 2020. In early June, Lowrance presented the Riggles a buy-sell proposal. COVID-19 had gutted the club&#x27;s revenue, and the Riggles could not raise matching capital. MyBallard reported the takeover that August. &quot;We were forced out,&quot; Riggle told MyBallard. &quot;I designed every square foot of that building.&quot; He added: &quot;If it hadn&#x27;t been for COVID, I could have come up with the money.&quot;</p> <h2>The hotel that was never going to touch the landmark</h2> <p><b>City records list project 3034789 at 5301 Leary Ave NW.</b></p><p>Status: canceled. The proposal, filed for Early Design Guidance in December 2015 under architect Skidmore Janette, called for demolishing the two-storey, non-historic annex on the Leary side and replacing it with six storeys: two levels of athletic club, four levels of hotel, a rooftop deck. It would have shared underground parking with the 29-room Hotel Ballard boutique hotel at 5214 Ballard Ave NW, opened in 2013 under the same ownership group. It would have held 63 hotel rooms and 38 parking spaces across about 16,000 square feet, with a sustainability push aimed at the Living Building Challenge&#x27;s extra-height bonus.</p><p>A public project tour ran on 8 September 2019. A second Early Design Guidance package, this one under architect NelsenPartners, carries a cover date of 16 March 2020, so the redesign was still moving through city review that spring, the same year the buyout closed. The reason and the date of the cancellation are not in the portion of the file that is publicly readable. The status is, and it reads one word: canceled.</p>
Seattle Fitness Magazine · 19 Sep 2026
  • 63canceled hotel rooms
  • ~1,1752011 class action members
  • 2pools

5301 Leary, 5232 Ballard: one property, two buildings

Olympic Athletic Club sits at 5301 Leary Ave NW in Ballard, open Monday through Friday from 5am to 11pm and weekends from 6am to 9pm.

Members swim laps, shoot free throws, lift weights. That address is not the whole story. Walk around the corner, to Ballard Avenue and Vernon Place, and the same property becomes 5232 Ballard Ave NW, the Matthes Block, a dark red brick landmark with rusticated masonry, on the National Register and inside the Ballard Avenue Landmark District since 1976.

One property. Two buildings, joined into a single complex. The gym's Leary-facing side is a newer, non-historic annex. The Ballard Avenue side is the landmark. Only the annex was ever slated for demolition.

What the Matthes brothers built

The city's own historic record puts construction in 1903, credited to brothers Oscar and Albin Matthes and financed by profits from their Old Home Saloon, which was already running before the new building went up. A Ballard Historical Society photo caption puts it in the 1890s instead. The date is disputed between them, and the city's is the better sourced. Beaux Arts and Neoclassical in style, the Matthes Block started at two storeys and gained a third in 1920.

Dark red brick. Rusticated masonry. The kind of building that reads as a bank before anyone tells you it was one, and it was sometimes called the Elks Temple besides. Both the National Register listing and the Ballard Avenue Landmark District designation date to 1976. The city's record even gives the building a name for what it eventually became, Olympic Athletic Club, with the switch to athletic-club use dated to 1987.

A bank vault, an Elks Lodge, and a post office under one roof

The sequence runs like this.

The Old Home Saloon came first, funding construction before 1903. Elks Lodge #827 took the upper floor starting around 1903. During Prohibition, the Ballard branch of the Dexter-Horton Bank moved in, and the Ballard Historical Society's own walking tour notes that the entryway tiles still read Dexter-Horton today. A Westside Seattle piece from December 2009 reports that the vault still remains in the lower levels.

The post office came next, and the record on it is unusually precise: an archive photograph, dated in its own banner, shows postal workers posed under a sign reading U.S. POST OFFICE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, BALLARD STATION, AUGUST 14, 1935. A door in the same frame reads B.P.O.E. 827 MEMBERS ONLY. The Elks and the post office were sharing the building that day. A second Ballard Historical Society photograph documents postal staff again on 21 August 1940, five years after the first.

The Riggles turn a landmark into a gym

Jim and Debra Riggle bought the building in January 1980.

By 1987, per the city's own record, it had become an athletic club. Westside Seattle's 2007 history of Ballard already described the property in terms of its newest life, calling it "the Ballard Avenue face of the Olympic Health Club." The gym that grew into the property kept the period detailing. The basketball court runs under dark wainscoting with medallion detailing, exposed brick on the upper walls, heavy exposed wood roof trusses overhead. The main weight floor has its own exposed brick, heavy timber trusses, an arched period window at the back, wood columns, industrial pendant lighting.

There are two pools and a hot tub, and the class schedule runs from cycling and yoga through Pilates, Les Mills Bodypump and bootcamp. Childcare runs out of Kids Korner, both locker rooms have steam rooms and saunas, and Olympic Spa operates as a partner. Kids Korner runs $9 an hour for up to two hours. A guest pass costs $20 for an adult, $5 to $15 for a child.

A lawsuit, a scheme, and a buyout

In November 2011, members holding lifetime memberships sold in the 1980s got letters saying a new owner would not honor them past December 31. Attorney Toby Marshall filed a class action that December on behalf of roughly 1,175 members. The case settled in March 2012: anyone who bought before 26 July 1987 kept a lifetime membership, anyone who bought after got 14 additional years, and the new owners covered the legal costs. John Lowrance had become a minority partner in the club that same year, 2011, when the Hotel Ballard development was added to the business.

In January 2016, KUOW reported a different fight: Riggle recruiting gym members to join the neighboring Salmon Bay Eagles Aerie #2141 and vote to sell the Eagles' contaminated lot at 5244 Leary Ave NW, for $2.4 million, to the club for a parking garage. Then 2020. In early June, Lowrance presented the Riggles a buy-sell proposal. COVID-19 had gutted the club's revenue, and the Riggles could not raise matching capital. MyBallard reported the takeover that August. "We were forced out," Riggle told MyBallard. "I designed every square foot of that building." He added: "If it hadn't been for COVID, I could have come up with the money."

The hotel that was never going to touch the landmark

City records list project 3034789 at 5301 Leary Ave NW.

Status: canceled. The proposal, filed for Early Design Guidance in December 2015 under architect Skidmore Janette, called for demolishing the two-storey, non-historic annex on the Leary side and replacing it with six storeys: two levels of athletic club, four levels of hotel, a rooftop deck. It would have shared underground parking with the 29-room Hotel Ballard boutique hotel at 5214 Ballard Ave NW, opened in 2013 under the same ownership group. It would have held 63 hotel rooms and 38 parking spaces across about 16,000 square feet, with a sustainability push aimed at the Living Building Challenge's extra-height bonus.

A public project tour ran on 8 September 2019. A second Early Design Guidance package, this one under architect NelsenPartners, carries a cover date of 16 March 2020, so the redesign was still moving through city review that spring, the same year the buyout closed. The reason and the date of the cancellation are not in the portion of the file that is publicly readable. The status is, and it reads one word: canceled.

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