San Francisco-based GI Partners is the new owner of Seattle’s KOMO Plaza, the 294,000 square foot, two-building, Class-A office and retail complex next to the Space Needle. The Bay Area investor paid $275,833,563, or just over $938 per square foot to acquire the asset, according to public documents. The seller was Hines, which over the last year has been divesting a number of its properties through several funds it owned across the United States.
Located in a highly desirable location in the heart of Seattle adjacent to the Space Needle, Seattle Center and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, KOMO Plaza supports the critical facility infrastructure, strategic office needs and business continuity provisions of an impressive roster of local, national, and international companies, states the building’s Web site.
According to the Web site, only three suites totaling approximately 26,000 square feet are available for rent in the two buildings, bringing occupancy to over 91 percent.
In 2016, Hines REIT has sold 22 of its directly owned properties for $2.3 billion, before transaction costs and retirement of debt. In addition, during that same time period, the Hines US Core Office Fund LP, in which Hines REIT owns a 28.8 percent LP interest, sold four of its properties for $762.7 million, before transaction costs and retirement of debt. In November Hines REIT that it was in the process of liquidating the few remaining assets it owns directly and through its interest in Hines US Core Office Fund LP and was anticipating those sales to be completed before year-end.
Also in November, Hines sold Bellevue’s Civica Office Commons towers, a two-building, 323,562 square foot Class A office complex in the heart of the Eastside city for $192.9 million, or just over $596 per square foot. In the same week it also disposed of the Daytona-Laguna buildings in Redmond, which are home to Honeywell and Microsoft; and 5th and Bell building in Seattle, which is occupied by Amazon.
The Daytona-Laguna complex sold for just over $203 million, for the nine-building, 715,000-square-foot development. On a combined square foot basis, that price comes to roughly $284. The 5th & Bell property closed for $92.9 million, or roughly $486 per square foot.
