By Meghan Hall
Amazon’s expansion into downtown Bellevue continues as the company has signed a lease to occupy the highly anticipated Summit III building developed by international real estate firm Hines Global REIT located at 320 108th Ave. N.E., according to sources with knowledge of the deal. According to the sources, Amazon has leased up all 17 stories of the building, totaling 377,000 square feet of Class A office space.
The lease is the third one Amazon has inked in downtown Bellevue, and the news comes on the heels of its decision to sign a 16-year lease for more than 400,000 square feet at 333 108th Ave. N.E. in August of this year. According to regulatory filings, Amazon will take over the 20-story office building—which is owned by Chicago-based Equity Commonwealth—in 2020. The building is currently occupied by Expedia, who plans to move into a new corporate campus near Elliott Bay in Seattle when its current lease expires in December of 2019. The company’s first lease in Bellevue, signed in 2016, was for 354,000 square feet of space spread over 16 stories at the Center 425 building located near 106th Ave. N.E. and Northeast Fourth St. All three buildings are located in Bellevue’s central business district, just blocks away from one another.
With the newest deal, Amazon has leased nearly 1.15 million square feet in Bellevue, expanding its reach beyond its home in the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle. Currently, Amazon’s office footprint in Seattle totals over 10 million square feet, and as of August, roughly 2,000 Amazon employees worked in Bellevue. The company’s newest leases could accommodate hundreds more workers.
The building was designed by a team consisting of LMN, Magnusson Klemencic Associates, ME Engineers, Berger Partnership, Pace Engineering Services and Hines Conceptual Construction Group received approval from the City of Bellevue in October 2018 to move forward with construction of the development. Amenities to the building include the Summit Room, a combination of a lobby, building lounge and meeting area, a state-of-the-art fitness center, a conference center, a Bright Horizons care facility and a Café Pogacha restaurant. Project plans also include a seven-story subterranean parking garage.
Bellevue-based Broderick Group was the broker leasing the project on behalf of Hines.
At the time of Summit III’s project approval, President and CEO of Hines Sherri Schugart said, “This is a prime example of the Hines difference at work—marrying top-down macroeconomic factors with local-market development expertise. We believe the build out of this development will not only enhance the Bellevue skyline, but also position Summit III as a high-quality asset that should generate attractive investment returns for our shareholders.”
