Prime Seattle Land For Sale Could Reshape City Skyline (Bellevue: real estate, apartments)

[desertgirl]

June 18, 2007
By Jennifer S. Forsythe
From the Wall Street Journal Online


SEATTLE -- The Clise family began buying prime real estate here in 1889, just after much of downtown was destroyed by fire.

Now, after patiently accumulating 13 contiguous acres downtown and shunning investors who wanted well-placed pieces of it, the family is putting the land on the market. In play are about seven city blocks, now mostly occupied by parking lots, that bump against a vibrant urban center. The fate of this property could not only alter the Seattle skyline but perhaps the architectural and economic reputation of a city with international aspirations.

The area the family is putting up for sale has the potential for 13 million square feet of development -- which would rival the size of London's Canary Wharf or the entire World Trade Center complex in New York before the terrorist attacks. But Seattle, with a population of about 500,000, is much smaller than London or New York, so the potential impact of such construction on the city around it is much greater. "It's unbelievable -- the scope of what's being put on the market," says Pat Callahan, chief executive of Urban Renaissance Group, a Seattle-based commercial-real-estate company. "It will send a sonic boom through this market."


RealEstateJournal | Prime Seattle Land for Sale, Could Reshape City Skyline

[pwright1]

There will be a feeding frenzy for this property. This is definately prime property in the heart of one of downtown's up and coming areas. New condos already under construction around there, the new Whole Foods already there, the new trolley coming in a couple of months, steps from the retail district. This is indeed prime real estate.

[desertgirl]

The feeding frenzy has already started. The skyline is beautiful as seen from your gorgeous pictures. Just imagine what the skyline would be like in 15 years.

June 20, 2007

Targeting Seattle

By Jennifer S. Forsythe and Nathan Koppel
From the Wall Street Journal Online

Calls have been pouring into the West Coast offices of real-estate-services firm Jones Lang LaSalle, asking about 13 acres of downtown land on the market in Seattle. The land could hold up to 13 million square feet of development -- about the size of New York's World Trade Center complex before it was destroyed.

Michel Seifer, managing director of capital markets for Jones Lang LaSalle, declines to name the developers, but says "the number of calls indicates there will be broad interest."

Among those believed to be prime candidates as buyers: Houston-based Hines, which has six properties in the Seattle area; New York-based Tishman Speyer Properties, with three properties there; Minneapolis-based Opus Corp., which has developed several properties in Seattle and its suburbs; and San Francisco-based Shorenstein Properties.

RealEstateJournal | Manhattan Landlord Giant Gets a Toehold in Brooklyn

[desertgirl]

These are exciting times for the Bellevue-Seattle area. Bellevue is undergoing a construction boom. It's office vacancy rate for the first quarter was around 4.5%, even lower than Seattle’s 9.3%. Offices, residential condos, upscale retailers, and restaurants have started to move in. Microsoft signed a lease in April for 1.3 million square feet and plans for further expansion are in the works.



The New York Times

The Cranes Are Back and So Are the Tenants

June 17, 2007

By Christina Shevory
The New York Times
BELLEVUE, Wash.

CONSTRUCTION cranes quickly disappeared from the skyline of this affluent city near Seattle, office vacancy rates shot up as high as 28 percent and developers postponed once-ambitious projects when the dot-com boom went bust six years ago. Bellevue had become a city where no developer seemed to want to be.

“Everything was too good to be true, and then reality came through,” said Kemper Freeman, the president and chief executive of Kemper Development, one of Bellevue’s largest land owners and developers.

But this city, whose fortunes rose and fell with those of the technology industry, has been staging a comeback.

Nowadays, a dozen or so construction cranes loom over work sites in Bellevue’s downtown. Some 2.2 million square feet of office space, some of it speculative, and more than 2,500 apartments and condominiums are under construction, according to the Bellevue Downtown Association, a nonprofit group. Projects like Mr. Kemper’s Lincoln Square, a 1.4-million-square-foot development with hotel rooms, condominiums, an office tower and a shopping mall, have been restarted and are near completion.

Already, companies are planning to move into Bellevue, which is about 10 miles east of Seattle and, in the 2000 census, had a population of almost 110,000. Microsoft is expanding its offices here, while Eddie Bauer has chosen the city for its new headquarters and Neiman Marcus is opening its first Pacific Northwest store here.

“If you look at the companies leasing downtown, these aren’t imaginary companies,” said Matt Terry, the director of planning and community development for Bellevue, referring to some of the dot-com businesses that once set up headquarters in the city, then quickly folded. “That speaks well for Bellevue’s economic future, and that’s very different from the past.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/re...in&oref=slogin

[Apathizer]

Originally Posted by desertgirl

These are exciting times for the Bellevue-Seattle area.

That's a very optimistic assessment. If it is sensibly developed, it could be positive. However, I fear Seattle is becoming a generic big-city sh.ithole because of the pernicious influence of it's more materialistic elements.