Onni Group

Ownership

Family-held, and contested.

Onni was built by Innocenzo De Cotiis, who bought his first North Vancouver rental property in 1964 and grew the company into a North American portfolio before his death in September 2020 at age 82. The privately held group is run by his sons.

The founder's estate has been litigated. In December 2023 the B.C. Supreme Court ordered the sons who administer the family trusts to produce documents, after eldest-line son Ivano De Cotiis challenged a pair of 2019 trusts that divided the holdings unequally among the seven brothers.

Financial capacity

Active in the capital markets.

Onni has kept moving on large financings. In July 2024 it closed roughly $1 billion in refinancing across eight U.S. apartment properties in the Chicago and Los Angeles areas — about 2,791 units — with debt provided by Wells Fargo, Citi and Goldman Sachs.

In March 2026, as 606 prepared to break ground, Onni paid about $125 million for a 50-story, roughly 1.1-million-square-foot office tower at 161 N. Clark Street in the Chicago Loop, financed with a $156.7 million loan from Barings.

And in June 2026 Onni closed on the former Hudson's Bay flagship at 674 Granville Street in downtown Vancouver, bought out of the defunct retailer's court-supervised receivership for a reported C$112.5 million — half the roughly C$225 million the sale process had initially sought. A land-transfer document dated June 24, 2026 names a numbered nominee company as the buyer; the court had approved the sale in May. The 1913 Edwardian building spans roughly 617,000 square feet over seven above-grade and two below-grade levels on a 1.76-acre block, with direct entrances into the Granville SkyTrain station. Onni has not disclosed its plans, though reporting expects the heritage facade to be retained.

Track record

Big projects can stall.

Onni's other large Seattle-area undertaking shows how megaprojects can change mid-stream. Its 1120 John Street block in South Lake Union was permitted as roughly 936,000 square feet of offices, then sat as a dormant excavation pit for about a year amid the post-pandemic office downturn. Onni changed architects and re-filed in late 2024 for a phased, primarily residential scheme of about 814 homes in 14- and 49-story towers, with offices deferred to a later phase.

Construction risk

Deep digs draw scrutiny.

Onni 606's five below-grade levels make excavation and shoring the build's highest-risk phase — and Onni has been litigated over that exact work elsewhere. In early 2023 the City of Burnaby, B.C. sued Onni and its consultants, alleging that excavation and secant-wall work at the Gilmore Place project lowered the groundwater table and caused settlement that damaged adjacent city sidewalks, lanes and streets. The architect named in that suit, IBI Group, is also the architect of Onni 606.

On safety, WorkSafeBC fined Onni's contracting subsidiary, Onni Contracting Ltd., C$48,719.50 in connection with the 2015 fall death of a worker on a Kamloops project — a penalty the B.C. Federation of Labour publicly called inadequate.

Hotel operator

A brand Onni has built before.

The hotel floors planned for Onni 606 — roughly 317 furnished suites — would be operated under Level Hotels & Furnished Suites, Onni's in-house hospitality brand. Level runs fully furnished suites bookable nightly or for extended stays, and as of 2026 operates in five cities: Chicago, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Seattle and Vancouver. The Level attribution for 606 is reported, not formally announced — the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce wrote in June 2026 only that the rooms "would likely operate under Onni's in-house Level brand." As of mid-2026 Level's own destinations list shows no Bellevue location — or any "coming soon" — so the 606 attribution remains an informed expectation rather than a posted plan.

The nearest precedent is Level Seattle — South Lake Union, the hotel component of Onni's 1120 Denny Way complex: 272 furnished suites in a 12-story volume that connects two 41-story residential towers (827 apartments). That property offers studio-through-three-bedroom suites of roughly 523 to 1,847 square feet, each with a full kitchen, living area, balcony and in-suite laundry — the same furnished-apartment product Onni would carry into a Bellevue Level hotel, and the closest model for how a Level hotel can be massed inside a larger mixed-use building.

Sustainability

A district-energy track record.

Onni 606's plan for a central energy plant (relocated to Tower 1 in the 2024–25 refinement) has a direct precedent in Onni's Seattle portfolio. Onni describes its South Lake Union (Level Seattle) project as built around a district energy plant that, in its words, "shares power amongst buildings and utilizes renewable energy sources" — though that is the company's own description rather than an independent USGBC listing. When Onni first floated the SLU system at design review, the DJC reported a district approach "could lower capital and operating costs, and allow buildings to share and reuse heat and water," with deep-green firm Integral Group named in the sustainability documents.

More broadly, Onni's corporate sustainability spec calls for energy-efficient appliances, solar hot-water tubes, high-efficiency boilers and Energy Star windows, sets a goal to "recycle 75% of waste generated on each project," and says it "generously" installs green roofs for stormwater, sound and heat-island benefits. These are Onni's baseline standards, not confirmed specs for 606 — no project-specific energy-plant scope, green-roof area or LEED target for the Bellevue towers has been published.

Buyer & seller

The buyer entity, and who sold.

The Bellevue block is held by a single-purpose entity, ONNI 106TH AVE BELLEVUE LLC — a Delaware LLC formed November 27, 2018, about three months before the February 2019 closing, and registered in Washington under UBI 604374542. State records list its registered agent as Capitol Corporate Services, Inc. in Tumwater, a principal office in Phoenix, Arizona, and a mailing address at 1010 Seymour Street in Vancouver, B.C. — Onni Group's headquarters.

The seller was Sterling Realty Organization (SRO), the same family firm whose John Danz Theatre, bowling alley and retail once occupied the block. SRO traces to a movie chain founded by John Danz in 1911 and remains family-controlled into its fifth generation; in May 2026 long-time executive chairman David Schooler retired after 47 years, with Tom Gilchrist becoming executive chair and Matt Skager president.