Seattle, Wash. (August 18, 2016) – Bridge Development Partners, LLC, a Chicago-based industrial and office developer, has purchased 14 acres of land located at 1010 South 146th Street in Burien, Washington. The NERA, Northeast Redevelopment Area, of Burien is an industrial-zoned segment of land adjacent to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The sale marks the first milestone in private-sector investment in the NERA. Kidder Mathews commercial real estate brokers, Dan Mathews and Mike Newton, represented both parties in the transaction.
The NERA was created in 1997 as an area impacted by current and future aviation activities at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The City of Burien, in partnership with the Port of Seattle, determined how to respond to regional market and economic realities while adapting to physical and environmental development capacities. The shared goal was to realize the vision for the area as a sustainable airport-compatible redevelopment.
The Port of Seattle’s Century Agenda was initiated in 2012 and aims to add 100,000 jobs through economic growth over the next 25 years, while reducing its environmental footprint. The NERA properties represent a significant opportunity in reaching that goal through partnerships between the public and private sectors. With limited land available for new industrial facilities north of Kent, the NERA, and this new project specifically, offer a benchmark addition to the distribution and warehousing space necessary to support the Century Agenda.
“The results of this ten-year planning effort are the first steps toward making the City of Burien’s and Port of Seattle’s visions a reality. I recognized the synergies between the goals of the public and private sectors, and collaborated with all parties to assemble the land and bring suitable developer and end user options,” said Mathews. “This project will spur economic development to support families in the region for years to come,” he said.
Bridge Development Partners saw the potential value of the site and pursued the opportunity to expand their operations to the Pacific Northwest. They are currently constructing a new 241,140 square foot cold storage facility for the end user, Western Distribution Services, LLC, a Renton-based logistics, cold storage, warehouse provider.
New cold storage facilities are needed to meet stringent code regulations for food safety, storage, and transportation. Western Distribution Services President, John Naylor, believes in the Port’s Century Agenda and the benefit of the Bridge Point Burien site’s proximity to the airport and critical shipping routes. He sees the NERA sites as an opportunity for creating a new cold storage, processing, and warehousing campus to serve the growing needs of an increasingly regulated food services sector.
Mathews and Newton negotiated the lease transaction between Bridge Development Partners and Western Distribution Services.
About Kidder Mathews
Kidder Mathews is one of the largest independently owned commercial real estate firms on the West Coast, with over 550 real estate professionals and staff in 14 offices in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Kidder Mathews offers a complete range of brokerage, appraisal, property management, consulting, sustainability, and project and construction management services for all property types. The firm performs $4.7 billion in transactions, manages over 37 million square feet of space, and conducts over 1,300 appraisals annually.
About Bridge Development Partners
Bridge Development Partners, LLC is a privately owned firm focused on the development and acquisition of industrial and office real estate in the Chicago, Los Angeles, South Florida, and Northern New Jersey regions. Bridge develops investment-grade buildings and business parks, and acquires existing Class A and Class B properties that provide opportunities to add value. Since its inception in 2000, Bridge has successfully acquired and developed more than 16 million square feet of office and industrial buildings/projects valued at more than $1.7 billion. In 2012, the company formed a strategic joint venture with Dallas-based Akard Street Partners, L.P., an investment partnership operated by Hunt Realty Investments, Inc.
