DEVELOPMENTS

News about construction projects underway

Posted February 2005

SEATTLE

DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES Construction cranes for three major projects dot the Seattle skyline.

In what could be the defining project for downtown Seattle for some time to come, Washington Mutual has begun construction on a 42-story tower it is calling "WaMu Center," with an expected completion date in the first half of 2006. The $300-million project will yield nearly a million feet of office space and allow the bank to consolidate its far-flung offices throughout Seattle. With its $289 billion in assets, Washington Mutual is the nation's sixth-largest bank. Between 4,000 and 5,000 Washington Mutual employees will work in the new building. The Seattle Art Museum will occupy the bottom quarter of the new tower with a tunnel connecting to the museum's current location on the same block. Washington Mutual says until the museum needs the room, it will lease out the base floors as office space.

The deal has been in the works since 2002. The project received the green light when the Seattle Art Museum and the Museum Development Authority sold the land for $18 million. As the bank vacates space in the existing Washington Mutual Tower, some of the city's most breathtaking views of Puget Sound will become available to lease.

BELLEVUE
When Safeco Corp. spun off its life insurance and investment arm as Symetra Financial Corporation, the new company decided it would call downtown Bellevue home. Come July, Symetra will move its 1,000 employees from Redmond into two buildings with a combined area of nearly 270,000 square feet. The deal, brokered by Equity Office Partners, drops Bellevue's office vacancy rates to 7.8 percent - a three-point drop that is the sharpest decline in vacancy rates ever for the Eastside city.

Safeco Corp. is centered in Seattle and has significant operations in Redmond. Having divested itself of the life and investment divisions, Safeco will now focus on automotive, homeowners and small-business insurance. The company is expected to centralize its operations to its Seattle headquarters, where it currently employs 1,600 workers, or to Redmond, where 1,400 people work across the street from Microsoft. The insurer currently owns 537,000 square feet across Seattle, including the University District Headquarters. The announcement of the new location is expected in July.

SEATTLE
TIAA-CREF, the retirement fund based in New York, bought the 40-story Seattle IDX Tower for $368 million, which equates to a record $411 per square foot. The selling group is made up of a joint venture between Hines and National Office Partners. Office towers were also acquired in Washington D.C., San Francisco and Pleasanton, Calif. as part of the $1.5 billion deal.

The 845,533 square foot tower's sale smashed the previous per square foot record of $393. The nation's top five real estate markets regularly hit $400 per square foot, but the rate is a first for Seattle. The architecturally-significant central branch of the Seattle Public Library opened next to the IDX Tower in May 2004.

The IDX Tower, which joined Seattle's skyline in 2002, has prestigious lease agreements with the law firm of Preston Gates & Ellis, securities firm McAdams Wright Ragen, Inc., information technology company IDX Systems Corp. and the big five accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche.

Hines, flush with cash from this multi-city deal, is looking at reinvesting some of its capital back into Seattle, according to company officials.