By Jack Stubbs
Bellevue’s Eastgate neighborhood—located just south of Bellevue College and sitting in close proximity to the intersection of I-90 and I-405—continues to attract investors and firms looking to capitalize on the dynamic and buzzing local commercial real estate market.
On February 22nd, in a transaction that was recently recorded, The Crestwood Corporate Plaza, a Class A office property totaling just over 153,300 square feet, sold for $23.575 million, or around $317 per square foot, King County records show.
The buyer was San Francisco-based Swift Real Estate Partners, a real estate investment that focuses on West Coast office and industrial properties. The seller was Crestwood Corporate Plaza LLC, an entity based in Clyde Hill, WA.
“Demand for Eastside office space is so strong that in order to complete the sale we needed to we negotiate the purchase of the law office next door so the new owner can demolish it and create additional parking for the building,” said Leroy Lutu, senior associate in Marcus & Millichap’s Seattle office who brokered the sale. “It is estimated that the Bellevue office market will triple in size by 2030. Currently, vacancy in the submarket is below 3 percent.”
According to a flyer recently released by Marcus & Millichap announcing the sale, the property was purchased by the previous owners in 2003 for $4.95 million. The property was 45 percent vacant at the close of escrow, but has a diverse tenant mix.
The acquisition by Swift makes the plaza the firm’s fifth acquisition on the Eastside. Swift Real Estate’s purchase of the Crestwood Corporate Plaza comes just a few months after the company made another acquisition in the Eastside office market. In August 2019, the company bought the Bellevue 520 Corridor Office Portfolio—a 94,221 square foot two-building complex comprised of Bel Kirk 520 and Centra Office Park—from Schnitzer West for a combined $59.3 million.
Crestwood Corporate Plaza, located at 14725 SE 36th St. within the Eastgate area of Bellevue, is a four-story Class A office property constructed in 2001 that totals 153,317 square feet, according to the listing on commercialcafe.com. According to the listing written by Kidder Mathews, some of the amenities at Crestwood Corporate Plaza include 24 surface-level parking stalls, conferencing facility, and an on-site fitness center.
According to Google Maps, some of the current tenants at Crestwood include Quadrant Home Loans and Loveridge Hunt and Co.
The property is right across Interstate-5 from the Sunset Village Shopping Plaza and roughly half a mile south of Bellevue College and Robinswood Community Park.
The sale of Crestwood Corporate Plaza is the latest in a string of transactions that have occurred in Bellevue—among several others in Eastgate—over the last one or two quarters. In late December 2019, the San Francisco office of Los Angeles-headquartered PCCP spent $114.5 million (just over $405 per square foot) to acquire the five-building, 281,000 square foot Cascade Yard office complex, which is just under one mile from the Crestwood Corporate Plaza.
Towards the latter end of 2019, there was a flurry of sales activity in Bellevue’s commercial market. Some of the more notable transactions included Beacon Capital Partners spending $230.4 million ($480 per square foot) to acquire the One Twelfth at Twelfth complex, Invesco spending $585 million, around $727 per square foot, to buy the Microsoft-leased Bravern Office Commons in downtown Bellevue and KKR parting with nearly $740 million on The Summit, a 915,000-square-foot Class A office complex in the Bellevue Central Business District.
