Vulcan Buys South Lake Union Site for $35M

Seattle-based Vulcan Real Estate has purchased the site at 791 Ninth Avenue North in Seattle's South Lake Union market with plans for a seven-story office project. Vulcan Director of Real Estate Investment Strategy Lori Mason Curran said in an email that the company bought the property with the long term-plan of eventually expanding the Allen Institute, a brain and cellular research center that Vulcan Chairman and CEO Paul Allen launched. Vulcan paid $35 million for the property that sits catty-corner from the new $200 million, 270,000 square foot life sciences building, opened just last year, that serves as the Allen Institute headquarters. An entity related to Walton Street Capital was listed as the seller of 791 Ninth Avenue, which paid $10.5 million for the two-thirds of an acre last February.

Over the past decade, Vulcan Real Estate has played a key role in developing the South Lake Union neighborhood into a hub for creative class employees including renowned life sciences organizations like Seattle BioMed, PATH, the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Institute for Systems Biology. "South Lake Union has become the center of life sciences research for the state," said Ada Healey, vice president of real estate for Vulcan Inc.

"It has been a privilege to watch the Institute grow, and to witness the huge impact the Allen Institute for Brain Science's research and its public resources have had on the broader neuroscience community," said David Anderson, Ph.D., professor of biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at the California Institute of Technology, and Scientific Advisory Board member at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. "I look forward to the next phase of the Institute's growth and productivity [...], and with a deep appreciation for Mr. Allen's generous and farsighted investment in science."

A partnership between Talon Private Capital and Chicago-based Walton Street Capital worked with Lake Union Partners to develop an office project on the site after purchasing it last February. The plans for the development called for roughly 163,000 square feet of office space with 16,000 square feet of ground floor retail, as well as underground parking, with an estimated project cost of $70 million. Lori Mason Curran would not say what, if any, changes Vulcan might make to that project.

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Unico Buys South Lake Union Office Building

Seattle-based Unico Properties LLC, a real estate investor and full-service operator, has purchased 701 Dexter Avenue North, a six-story office building near the southwest shore of Lake Union, just northeast of downtown Seattle. According to public records, the sale was closed on November 25, 2015 for a total of $17,700,000, or $281 per square foot. Terms of the deal were not disclosed; the seller was a JV called 702 Aurora North Joint Venture, which includes OAC Services, an architecture and engineering services firm, according to Shawn Mahoney, a principal at OAC.

The 62,000-square-foot building is currently 93% leased, with engineering firm Grey & Osborne and OAC Services as the two largest tenants. Mahoney noted that OAC intends to remain in the building as a tenant. Andrew Cox, vice president and regional director at Unico, said the firm is considering a renovation but he would not get into specifics. Unico said it was attracted to this property because of all the new housing along Dexter — Unico says more than 1,000 apartments have opened nearby — and proximity to Amazon, Facebook, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Allen Institute.

For more news and information visit Blumberg Partners.