April 10, 2015

Construction could begin next year on Stadium East campus

Courtesy NBBJ [enlarge]

Greg Smith of Urban Visions said construction could begin as soon as mid 2016 on Stadium East, 1.2 million-square-foot mixed use campus south of downtown Seattle.

Plans call for seven office buildings with 150,000 combined square feet of retail space near CenturyLink and Safeco fields.

Urban Visions is starting the permitting process, but Smith said he wants to get the project teed up quickly. The buildings could be constructed all at once, or in phases.

Smith said Urban Visions usually waits for a significant prelease, but the company is leaving open the option to start building before leasing any of the space.

Smith said tenants could grow both horizontally and vertically at Stadium East. If a tenant wants all of its space on a single floor, it could lease the same floor in multiple buildings and connect the space through skybridges.

Smith wants the campus to be the greenest in the city, so Stadium East will participate in the Living Building Challenge, which is administered by the International Living Future Institute. The group calls the Living Build Challenge the built environment's most rigorous and ambitious environmental performance standard.

NBBJ is the architect on the project.

The project site is along the future East Link light rail line and close to Union Station and a Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel station.

Urban Visions has several projects around downtown in planning or under construction. At 200 Occidental, Urban Visions is under construction on the future headquarters for Weyerhaeuser.

At Second and Pike, Urban Visions wants to start construction in July on a 39-story apartment tower. Nearby, at 1516 Second Ave., Urban Visions recently started planning an 11-story office building.

At 888 Second Ave., Urban Visions is planning a 61-story tower with office space, topped by 16 floors of residential. NBBJ is the architect on that project. Smith said plans call for 985,085 square feet of office space, 220,800 square feet of residential and 52,000 square feet of retail.