By Meghan Hall
Bellevue and the Eastside are experiencing a steady transition from family-owned businesses and properties to large scale development as investors look to get ahead of the region’s rapidly expanding commercial real estate market. Another family-owned property with quick access to Interstate 405 and Bellevue’s Central Business District has been bought, this time by Phoenix, Ariz.-based Alliance Residential Company according to King County property records dating June 3rd. In the transaction, Alliance Residential bought a small office building, currently occupied by Surbeck Orthodontics, for approximately $12 million dollars from Simon Vincent LLC. The entity is associated with Burleigh and Katherine Surbeck, who own and operate Surbeck Orthodontics and reside in Bellevue.
The building, located at 121 112th Ave. NE., was constructed in 1973 and is composed of six business suites. The total size of the lot is 25,804 square feet, ample enough for future redevelopment. Preliminary planning documents submitted to the city of Bellevue by Alliance Residential indicate that the firm intends to demolish the existing two-story office and construct a seven-story assisted living and memory care building with ground floor retail uses and one level of below-grade parking. The plans also indicate that the new development would include 136 residential units and 45 parking stalls, and that the new building would total roughly 120,000 square feet.
Project plans were initially submitted by Alliance Residential in June 2018, and the developer completed its SEPA filing at the end of April; documents also indicate the city has begun processing permits for the development. Project document show the building will be modern in its approach and massing, and will be primarily clad in fiber cement and glass with muted colors of grays, whites and blues. The first floor will have a large overhead canopy to define the building’s base, while cedar wood soffits above the ground level will help to soften the development’s modern façade.
The active uses on the ground floor will be focused along 112th Ave. NE. and include a salon totaling 1,019 square feet at the northeast corner and a bistro on the southeast. The remainder of the first floor will consist of assisted living communal spaces. The bistro will total 1,092 square feet and will share a removable wall with the lounge for the senior living facility. The second floor of the building will is designated as secured access and will contain all memory-care related spaces as well as other facilities such as a spa area, activity room and outdoor gathering space. The third through seventh floors will house the remaining assisted living units and communal laundry, administrative office space and an additional medical care room.
Alliance is one of the largest private multifamily companies in the United States according to its website, with offices throughout the country and service offerings spanning from investment to asset and property management. The firm has invested in more than $10 billion worth of real estate and currently manages a $20 billion portfolio, with a focus on actively buying, building and managing assets in 33 metropolitan markets, and its acquisition strategy is based on a combination of local and national relationships. In its search for property, Alliance typically targets distressed assets such as loan purchases and short sales, value-add assets that require significant physical renovation, as well as core and core-plus assets using a long-term hold strategy. Alliance also specifically targets sites rezoned from commercial for-sale uses to lower-density multifamily rental, meaning that the Surbeck Orthodontics site fits neatly into the firm’s national portfolio.
