Hudson Pacific Buys Amazon Building for $119M

5th & Bell. Image courtesy of Hudson Pacific Properties Inc.

Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. caps a busy year of activity in the studio sector with the acquisition of a leasehold interest in a premier office asset in Seattle. The REIT purchased 5th & Bell, a 197,000-square-foot property leased in its entirety to Amazon, from Alexandria Real Estate Equities in a transaction valued at $119 million.

5th & Bell first opened its doors in 2002 as a development project of Touchstone. Carrying the address of 2301 Fifth Ave., the property sits within the city’s Belltown neighborhood in the Denny Triangle submarket. The building has spent time in the portfolios of some of the leading real estate companies in the U.S., including Hines, which acquired the six-story tower from Touchstone for $69.9 million in 2007. In 2016, a Blackstone affiliate purchased 5th & Bell for $93 million and held it until 2018, when the company sold the LEED Gold-certified property to Alexandria in an approximately $95 million transaction.

A Class A asset designed by architecture firm CollinsWoerman, 5th & Bell features a host of bells and whistles, including a rooftop deck, retail space and a well-equipped end-of-trip facility. Amazon first became a tenant in the building in 2014, occupying only a portion of the square footage at the time. The e-commerce giant became the sole tenant of the property after Alexandria took ownership.

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Hudson Pacific relied on a $75 million draw on its revolving credit facility and proceeds from its recently completed preferred stock offering to finance the acquisition of 5th & Bell. The purchase of the office building increases Hudson Pacific’s footprint in the Denny Triangle to nearly 2 million square feet and expands its presence in metropolitan Seattle to a total of approximately 3 million square feet.

A sector balancing act

Hudson Pacific has been busy bolstering its studio platform in 2021, while simultaneously maintaining an active role in the office sector. In the third quarter alone, the REIT partnered with Blackstone on the approximately $160 million acquisition of a 91-acre site near London for the development of Sunset Waltham Cross Studios. The company also revealed plans to develop Sunset Glenoaks Studios, a 241,000-square-foot, purpose-built studio facility in Sun Valley, Calif., via another joint venture partnership with Blackstone.

On the office side, Hudson Pacific submitted plans in Vancouver for Burrard Exchange, a 450,000-square-foot hybrid mass timber office and retail development at Bentall Centre. If given the green light, the property will be one of the tallest exposed mass timber office buildings in North America.