Capstone, Freiheit ready design for downtown Bellevue office tower, with JTM as contractor
08.31.2021 | Daily Journal of Commerce
08.31.2021 | Daily Journal of Commerce
Last month, Capstone Partners pounced on Fana Group’s site for a proposed condominium tower, paying $32.5 million for the midblock property at 305 108th Ave. N.E., where offices are now planned instead. Like every other developer rushing to build office towers for Amazon, as the tech giant plans a massive surge into downtown Bellevue, Capstone is moving quickly.
Capstone hopes to break ground next year, and says that no office broker has been selected yet. Its financial partner is PGIM, and the tower designer is Freiheit Architecture.
The city of Bellevue has begun evaluating the proposal for a 12-story building with about 198,000 square feet of offices. A deck on the 12th floor would have views to the southeast, Freiheit says.
JTM Construction will build the 305 Office Building, the working title for now. The team also includes Redpoint Studios, permit expeditor; Coughlin Porter Lundeen, structural; Holaday-Parks, plumbing; Navix Engineering, civil; Prime Electric and Gerber Engineering, electrical; Brumbaugh & Associates, landscape architect; Ground Support, shoring; Associated Earth Science, environmental consultant; and Goldsmith Land Development Services, surveyor.
The 34,335-square-foot midblock property is now home to an old two-story office building, eventually to be removed. It’s also about an eight-minute walk northeast to Downtown Bellevue Station, where light rail service will begin in 2023.
Freiheit writes of its design, “The preferred option staggers the project’s massing into three tiers, cascading a textured facade down the project’s south face, while creating street facing ‘windows’ to the east and along the alley to the west with the full height of each tier. This modulation of the masses, from the south to the north, provides appropriate scaling between adjacent buildings along 108th.”
Those two adjacent neighbors on 108th are Civica Office Commons, to the south, and Tower 333 to the north. The latter is leased to Amazon, which calls it Bingo.
Capstone inherited Fana’s old demolition permit, which is underway. Fana had also secured a SEPA determination of non-significance for its condo tower, which could help expedite the office plan.
That plan also includes about 2,000 square feet of retail or cafe space, which also flows into the lobby area. A plaza with public art is also indicated for 108th.
Above, the office floor plates would start at around 23,000 square feet, then taper to about 16,000 square feet on the sixth through 11th floors. The 12th floor would be divided among offices, 6,000 square feet of amenity space and a nearly 3,000-square-foot deck.
The building would have over four levels of underground parking with about 362 stalls. (Truck loading and about a dozen structured parking stalls are also included at grade.) The parking entry from 108th would be pushed toward the south side of the building. Drivers would have to cross the new bike lane on 108th to access the garage.
A tenant bike room is also indicated on the P1 level.