Suburban Seattle Office Campus Trades for $55M

Corporate Campus East III. Image courtesy of Newmark Knight Frank

Corporate Campus East III, an approximately 154,800-square-foot office campus in Bellevue, Wash., has come under new ownership. With the assistance of Newmark Knight Frank, TA Realty sold the four-building property to a joint venture of SteelWave and Ares Management for roughly $55.3 million.  

Located at 3001, 3005, 3009 and 3015 N.E. 112th Ave. on nearly 12 acres along the 520 Corridor, Corporate Campus is near Bellevue’s CBD and 10 miles across Lake Washington from downtown Seattle. The property garnered its hare of eager suitors. “The Seattle region is one of the nation’s strongest suburban office markets. Subsequently, this asset gained a substantial amount of interest and offers from capital both domestically and internationally—the majority of which was institutional,” Kevin Shannon, co-head of U.S. Capital Markets at Newmark Knight Frank, told Commercial Property Executive. 

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The property reached completion in 1986 and later benefited from a major makeover in 2015. Currently 90 percent occupied, the campus last changed hands in 2014, when TA Realty purchased it from Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois in a $43.4 million transaction. Along with Shannon, Newmark’s Nick Kucha, Rob Hannan, Ken White, Michael Moll and Bill Delacy represented TA Realty in the sale, while the joint venture relied on internal representation.

Big buys beyond Seattle Proper

Metropolitan Seattle has been recording robust office sales activity, with deals ranging from modest to blockbuster, like Ponte Gadea’s record-breaking $740 million acquisition of the Amazon-occupied Troy Block in the city’s popular Lake Union submarket in the second quarter of 2019. However, it’s not just the CBD that is turning the heads of investors. “We are seeing no shortage of capital for well-located suburban office property in areas such as Bellevue, as it follows the upward trend that is likely to continue into the next couple of years,” Shannon said.

Two of the most notable transactions in the second quarter took place outside the City of Seattle’s borders. Amazon purchased the 257,000-square-foot Bellevue Corporate Plaza in an approximately $195 million deal and Preylock Holdings acquired the 970,000-square-foot Newport Corporate Center office campus, also in Bellevue, for $467.5 million.