DEVELOPMENTS

News about construction projects underway

Posted May 2005

LIFESTYLE AREAS STIMULATE KING COUNTY
Many of Seattle's developers are building a city that would be the pinnacle of urban living - a residence with always-there maid service, trouble-free downtown access and an address that exudes status.

Alley24 is set to finish this fall with 172 apartments, 185,000 square feet of office space and lots of street-level retail offerings. The building's 35 residential units offered at subsidized rates are unique among the new buildings changing the city's skyline.

2200 opens in Summer 2006 with 261 condos, an upscale hotel and grocery store

2200, a $200 million joint venture between Paul Allen's Vulcan and Milliken Developments Group, will offer elevator access to Whole Foods Market and Bank of America. The Pan Pacific Hotel will share the area with an estimated completion date of August 2006. When it opens, the 261 condos spread across three towers will likely be sold out.

Madison Tower will open shortly before 2200, with 47 luxury condos and what promises to be a posh Hotel 1000. The Sorrento Hotel's management group, which also manages four other hotels around Washington, will run the 120-room boutique hotel.

The Four Seasons Hotel will debut down the block from the future WaMu Center. Thirty lavish units will be in the same 21-story building as the 150 hotel rooms, with move-in dates sometime in 2007.

VISION OF A NEW BURIEN
Burien, a city of 31,000 people five minutes away from SeaTac Airport, is trying to transform its downtown into a vibrant place with a new city hall and transit center arranged in a Town Square format. To ensure the round-the-clock vibrancy council members are seeking, a movie theater and 280 condominiums will become part of the project. The King County Library System has expressed interest in occupying a new branch in the renovated downtown, and the developer, Urban Partners, has allotted space accordingly. The area is expected to draw twice the employment and population density as what is presently in Burien's main business corridor.

Before the plan can be fully executed, current tenants need to be integrated into the design or relocated.

BELLEVUE OFFICE PRICES SOAR
Only three months after Seattle hit record prices for area office space, Bellevue's Civica Office Commons, a 305,000-square-foot office building, sold for $462 per square foot. New York real estate investment firm Investcorp International Inc., with $2 billion in holdings, purchased the complex and its A-list of leases for $140 million from Schnitzer Northwest LLC. The building's class-A rents are among the highest in Bellevue. A group of investors bought Seattle's IDX Tower for $411 per square foot, beating the previous per square foot record of $393.

Those currently taking up residence in the four-year-old building include software developers Onyx Software and CH2M Hill.