By Meghan Hall
In the spring of 2018, San Francisco-based Stanford Hotels purchased three parcels from Plus Investment near downtown Bellevue, on which the latter had originally intended into a multi-tower development called Elev8. Now, more than a year after the $128 million transaction closed, Stanford Hotels plans for the property are becoming clear. According to planning documents on file with the City of Bellevue submitted at the end of June, the hotel developer plans on moving forward with the construction of three towers, totaling almost 4.16 million square feet. Instead of Elev8, the project is now to be called Cloudvue.
According to a notice of application released Thursday by the City of Bellevue, the most recent plans for the 4.61-acre lot includes three 600-foot towers composed of 1.7 million square feet of office space, 515 residential units and 40,000 square feet of active uses such as restaurants and retail. The units would be for high-end, high-income residents, state project documents. 3,100 below-grade parking spaces, which will total more than one million square feet, are also included in the plans.
The three-parcel lot, located at 10855 NE 8th St., is currently developed with a parking lot, a two-story office building and the First Congressional Church, all of which will be demolished to make way for new development. The lot is less than a mile from the Bellevue Square Shopping Center and Bellevue Downtown Park, as well as the Meydenbauer Convention Center. The project is also blocks from Bellevue 600, a development proposed on Amazon-owned property that is anticipated to include 885,000 square feet of office space, 14,000 square feet of retail and more than 1,000 parking spaces. Amazon purchased the site, currently developed with the Bellevue Corporate Plaza, in April of this year for $195 million.
The minimum public comment period for the project ends September 5, and before approval, the project must undergo an administrative design review and SEPA analysis. The project is expected to be delivered in 2024, could accommodate about 3,500 residents and employees.
The project is to be designed by MZA Architects, the same firm that Plus Investment had hired for the project. Plus Investment’s original proposal, submitted in March 2016, also included Class A office and residential. However, Plus Investment’s plans also included a fourth tower and a five-star hotel, 350 condominiums and 423 apartments.
Stanford Hotels is also working to complete several other projects throughout the Puget Sound, and is the developer behind the 283-room Amazon Headquarters Campus Hotel, which broke ground at the beginning of last year in South Lake Union.
Bellevue continues to attract the attention of developers and investors. According to second quarter office report released by Kidder Mathews, there are five new office projects that could break ground by 2020. Currently, there are four major office projects under construction, including the Kirkland Urban North and Central Buildings. Binary Towers, which will contain almost 700,000 square feet, is anticipated to break ground in the coming months and is fully pre-leased to Amazon. Vulcan’s 42-story tower, located at the Bellevue Transit Center and totaling 980,000 square feet, will break ground in early 2020. As Bellevue’s CBD office vacancy continues to decline, reaching 4.2 percent in the second quarter, Kidder Mathews predicts that more cranes are likely on the way.
