By Jack Stubbs
On November 22nd, four office buildings totaling approximately 177,350 square feet—located within the larger 450,000 square foot Gateway Corporate Center in Tukwila—sold for $40 million, or around $225 per square foot, King County records show. The buyer was Nicola GCC LP, an entity affiliated with Vancouver, B.C.-based Nicola Wealth Real Estate, and the seller was Boeing Employees Credit Union located in Tukwila.
The recent sale included four adjacent industrial/office buildings totaling approximately 177,350 square feet and located at 13028 Interurban Ave S.and 12674 Gateway Drive S., according to public documents. The structures, which are also known as Buildings 1, 2, 3, and 8 of the Gateway Corporate Center, were built between 1986 and 1990 and sit on approximately fourteen acres.
Gateway Corporate Center is a nine-building, 450,000 square foot Class A office campus which benefits from a prominent location at the intersection of several major transit corridors including I-5, I-405 and State Route 167, according to Kidder Mathews’ property listing. Clients at Gateway Corporate Center benefit from flexible layouts and flexible truck locating, and several amenities including the Green River Trail and Gateway Deli.
The property is roughly two miles north of downtown Tukwila and four miles south of Boeing Field, which is adjacent to Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood. The office campus is also approximately three miles west of Renton.
The Kent Valley —which ranges from Kent to Puyallup, and encompasses cities like Auburn and Sumner—continues to see activity on the industrial side in particular, with Boston-based real estate investment management firm TA Realty having made a number of acquisitions in Kent and Auburn in recent months.
In late August 2019, TA Realty sold the three-building, 82,800 square foot Fostoria Business Park in Tukwila and another warehouse building in SeaTac for a combined $32.5 million.
And while there have not been too many commercial/office sales in Tukwila in recent months, demand for industrial properties remains robust. “The Kent Valley is one of the strongest industrial markets in the country, due primarily to its location near the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma, Sea-Tac International Airport and rail connections,” said Bill Condon of Colliers International at the time of TA Realty’s transaction earlier this year.“Available existing product is limited, however, as are developable land sites, so these properties drew a lot of interest from investors looking to place funds in an environment of robust tenant demand and rising rents.”
