Puget Sound Business Journal
Marc Stiles
Aug 21, 2024
Link to article
Five of the nation’s biggest office developments this year are in the Puget Sound region, with four of five already done. A fifth, Amazon’s 43-story Tower 1 at 600 Bellevue, is tentatively set to deliver this quarter, according to a Wednesday report by internet listing company CommercialCafe.
At 1.14 million square feet, the Tower 1 is the list’s third largest under-construction project, following two projects in New York City.
From a photo taken Wednesday, general contractor Sellen and project manager Seneca Group still have plenty of work to do before the end of the quarter on Sept. 30.
Two years ago Amazon said it was holding off building Bellevue 600’s other tower, which is designed to be 31 stories.
Amazon on Wednesday had no updates on its plans to move into Tower 1 or The Artise, which at 609,375 square feet is No. 4 on CommercialCafe’s list of finished projects.
In 2022, Amazon said it would continue construction on the shell and core of Tower 1 at Bellevue 600 and The Artise as the company looked at the interior designs to meets employees’ future workplace needs.
“While we have no new updates at this time, we remain committed to bringing 25,000 jobs to Bellevue over the next several years,” a spokesperson said in an email.
Vulcan Real Estate’s nearly 1.1-million-square-foot West Main is the second-largest project on CommercialCafe’s list. In February, Amazon moved into 300,000 square feet of the project with three interconnected towers and named it Dynamo. In 2022, Amazon said it would complete the first tower and the shell and core of the other two towers.
Schnitzer West is the developer The Artise, which was designed by NBBJ and built by Sellen.
No. 5 on the list is Washington 1000, Hudson Pacific’s 546,000-square-foot speculative tower in Seattle; no leases have been announced. Following at No. 6 is Skanska’s Picard Chilton-designed The Eight, the 541,000-square-foot, multi-tenant building that’s 80% leased.
Construction activity continued its slowdown in the first six months of 2024, as interest rates and construction costs remain high, according to the report by CommercialCafe.
Across major markets, approximately 77 million square feet of space is under construction with Boston contributing some 12 million square feet, followed by Dallas and San Francisco, each with around 5 million square feet. With 2.5 million square feet, Seattle is in the middle of the pack with Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and the Bay Area.
The largest delivery was the 1.25-million-square-foot May Lee State Office Complex in Sacramento, California, which Portland-headquartered ZGF Architects designed.
Between West Main/Dynamo and The Artise is life sciences building The Rise, the 745,000-square-foot life science in IQHQ’s 5-acre waterfront development in San Diego.
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