By Jack Stubbs
Changes are on the way to the Eastside city of Redmond, with a large-scale project in the works set to add a dynamic new focal point to the area: Esterra Park, a 30-acre master planned community just off of State Route 520, is expected to be one of the region’s next great live-work hubs upon completion, with 2,600 apartment homes and 245,000 square feet of Class A office space slated for development.
With entitlements for various portions of the campus already in-progress, the project offers proximity to prominent transit corridors and major employers like Microsoft, with investors such as Madison, NJ-based PGIM Real Estate looking to play a role in the evolving development.
Following up on its mid-June acquisition of Block 3 of Esterra Park from Houston, Texas-based Development Capital Resources (DCR) for $11.2 million, PGIM on December 16th spent $14.3 million to acquire a vacant development site—also known as Block 2A/2B—for $14.3 million from USL2 Overlake Village Center LLC, an entity affiliated with Seattle-based Capstone Partners.
Located at 15300 NE Turing St., the parcel is a 3.2-acre plot of vacant land; King County records indicate that the site is zoned for commercial use. The parcel shares the same address as Avalon Esterra Park, which is an 8-story, 600-unit apartment building.
Lincoln Properties will be developing Esterra Park’s Blocks 5, 6A and 9 into three additional multifamily buildings, which will have 231, 212 and 215 units, respectively. Lincoln Properties purchased Blocks 5 and 6A in December of 2016 for $33.3 million, with plans for future development already proposed. Lincoln Properties’s underway portion of the project is located at the corner of 156th Ave. NE and NE Turing St.
Once built-out, Esterra Park is anticipated to become a major transit-oriented, live-work hub in one of Seattle’s many quickly growing suburbs–two light rail stations are expected to be added to Redmond by 2023, one of which will be based in Esterra Park itself, while the other will be located at the Overlake Transit Center at NE 40th St. With the light rail in place, residents and employees will be able to get into downtown Bellevue in 11 minutes and downtown Seattle in 30 minutes.
The campus is also served by the RapidRide B-Line as well as the King County Metro Regional transit station just to the south and the Overlake Transit Center, which sits at the north end of the property.
Esterra is also located within the Overlake Village Masterplan, which states that the area is ripe for development, with more than 48,000 jobs in the neighborhood. The City of Redmond is also anticipating to add more than 5,000 new homes and 25,000 jobs before 2030, with potential for the city’s growth expected to continue.
