By Jon Peterson
San Francisco-based Shorenstein Properties has paid $17 million to acquire the office building development site in South Lake Union located at 221 to 235 9th Avenue North, according to publicly recorded documents.
A company representative of Shorenstein did not respond in time when contacted for this story.
The seller of the property were LLCs that had been managed by Lincoln Popp, a former Microsoft employee and is now a co-managing director for Tegria, a health care company. The listing agent on the sale was the CBRE office in Seattle. People involved in the sale included Tom Pehl and Lou Senini, both senior vice presidents at the firm. CBRE declined to comment when contacted for this story.
The site that was purchased includes some existing office buildings. These are three low-rise buildings that are leased to a total of seven tenants. This provides Shorenstein with some in-place income with lease provisions allowing for the future development of the property. It is anticipated that the new development may be around 137,000 square feet, however it is not clear at this when the construction of the new office space would start or if Shorenstein would begin the project without any pre-leasing.
This project would be Shorenstein’s first new project in the Seattle downtown area in some time, according to sources familiar with the company’s activities. More recently, the company has been involved in redeveloping parts of the Spring District in Bellevue with a project located at 1227 124th Avenue Northeast. This development has been leased to Facebook.
The asset in South Lake Union is known as the 9North property. It includes three separate parcels that total 18,000 square feet and make up one quarter of a block. The plans for the site when the asset was brought to the market for sale allowed for building height up to 95 feet.
The South Lake Union office market is one of the most occupied markets across the region. The direct vacancy for the area is 2.9 percent, according to information compiled to CBRE. The vacancy for the broader downtown Seattle market is 7.4 percent.
