By Kate Snyder
A property adjacent to Southport on Lake Washington in Renton has traded hands. An entity affiliated with Starwood Capital Group purchased the 7.7 acres of undeveloped land for $8.8 million, according to King County property records. The seller was an entity affiliated with SECO Development, which originally purchased the property for $13.5 million in 2019.
Located along the southern tip of Lake Washington, the property is situated next to SECO Development’s Southport campus. The firm had planned a seven-acre expansion, called Southport West, to the campus, according to its website. That expansion plan consisted of five new mid-rise buildings.
No information on what Starwood plans to do with the recently-purchased property has been released.
Earlier this year, Starwood took over the office portion of the Southport complex and fulfilled all financial obligations of SECO Development, the previous owner, according to The Registry’s previous reporting. Starwood was the project lender and initially sought an investor to acquire the non-performing loan of $293 million secured by the approximately 720,000 square foot office complex before ultimately taking back the property.
Founded in 1989, SECO Development is a privately-held real estate development firm that focuses on large-scale urban sites with an emphasis on design and construction in each new community it builds, according to the firm’s website. For the past three decades, the Renton-based company has been involved in multiple large, mixed-use developments in the region, including 11 acres in downtown Bellevue, 13 acres in Kirkland and 3.9 acres on Mercer Island in addition to the Southport campus in Renton.
Starwood Capital Group is a private investment firm with a primary focus on global real estate, according to the company’s website. Since its inception in 1991, the firm has raised more than $75 billion of capital and currently has over $115 billion of assets under management. Throughout the past 31 years, Starwood Capital has invested in excess of $240 billion of assets, including properties within every major real estate asset class. The firm is headquartered in Miami Beach, Fla., and has approximately 5,000 employees in 16 offices worldwide.
