August 2, 2019 By Jack Stubbs | The Registry
Issaquah-based Lake Washington Partners, a privately-owned and family-owned commercial real estate investor and developer focused on office and industrial properties across the United States, recently made moves to expand its Puget Sound region portfolio.
On August 1st, the company spent $39 million, or approximately $178 per square foot, to acquire a three-building office park in Kent, King County records show. The seller of the complex was Portland, Oregon-based Menashe Properties, a family-owned commercial real estate company that operates throughout the Pacific Northwest and other West Coast markets.
Lake Washington Partners was represented in the transaction by Mike George and Scott Sulman of NAI Puget Sound Properties.
The subject property, called Creeksides at Centerpoint, is comprised of three Class A office buildings that total 218,426 square feet. Located at 20415, 20425 and 20435 72nd Ave. South, the three buildings offer flexible floor plans and convenient access to major transit routes including I-5 and I-405.
Creeksides is currently 97 percent leased to a diverse array of long-term tenants including Naverus, GE Aviation, the State of Washington, the Department of Health, the Department of Social and Health Services, Integra Telecom Holdings, Blue Nile and Iron Bow Technologies, among others.
The office campus is approximately five miles southeast of Sea-Tac Airport, six miles south of the up-and-coming city of Renton, and fifteen miles south of Seattle. Sitting roughly three miles north of downtown Kent, Creeksides at Centerpoint, built in 1984, also looks to capitalize on its natural surroundings, featuring landscaping with built-in picnic and rest areas, a pond and a waterfall.
The park-like setting of the property, which was renovated in 2000, is one of its primary draws, particularly for corporate companies looking for higher-quality space in the Kent Valley.
“Creeksides represented an opportunity to not only buy one of the Kent Valley’s highest quality office parks but it also offered us a prime opportunity to enter Seattle’s thriving and fast-growing Southend office submarket,” said Lake Washington Partners President Jordan Lott in a statement released by the company. “The campus offers beautiful, mature landscaping, is amenity-rich and it has an array of diverse and long-term tenants. We pride ourselves on being long-term investors and we are attracted to investments like Creeksides that offer a premier corporate address for preeminent companies, in one of the most desirable locations in a high-profile submarket.”
With the large population of residents in the Renton Highlands and Maple Valley neighborhoods, the campus offers easy accessibility for tenants and their employees. “Tenants are looking for high-quality office buildings and South King County offers lower lease rates than Seattle and Bellevue. With the growing workforce who live in the Kent Valley, Creeksides offers an excellent corporate office feel, without being a converted industrial warehouse. For many of the people working at Creeksides, it provides a metropolitan office environment just minutes from their homes,” Lott added.
There have not been all that many commercial transactions in the South King County city of Kent in recent months, though several industrial properties have traded hands since second quarter 2019. In early May, San Francisco-based Lift Partners purchased a 113,591 square foot industrial building—located at 22441 76th Ave. S.—for $16.5 million, or about $145 per square foot. In mid-June, Colorado-based Black Creek Group spent $16 million, or approximately $157 per square foot, to acquire a warehouse/distribution facility located at 8032 S 194th St. from Sweetener Products LLC.
Founded in 2006, Lake Washington Partners has developed and acquired 8 million square feet of industrial and commercial space nationwide, with more than 1 million square feet in the Seattle metropolitan area.
According to The Registry’s reporting, Lake Washington Partners was last active in the Puget Sound region in second quarter of last year. In March 2018, the company spent $20.5 million, or approximately $307 per square foot, to acquire a 66,827 square foot office property in Bellevue from Seattle-based Rainier Pacific Properties.
Menashe Properties’ portfolio includes various commercial properties in Portland, as well several assets located in Vancouver, Washington, a city located on the border between the two Pacific Northwest states. Some of these include the 50,578 square foot Parkway Plaza IV building—which part of the larger four-building Parkway Plaza complex—and the 29,000 square foot Fisher Building.