August 13, 2020

REI selling its new Bellevue campus as it opts for multiple ‘headquarters'

Image from REI [enlarge]

The Bellevue campus has a two-story office building with a single-story public market, and a five-story office building with ground-level retail. There are 876 parking stalls and extensive landscaping.

REI Co-op announced today it will sell its newly completed corporate campus in Bellevue's Spring District, opting instead for multiple “headquarters” across the region.

REI originally announced plans for the new headquarters in 2016, to be built on an 8-acre site in the transit-oriented Spring District. Construction began in 2018. About 1,400 employees from REI's headquarters offices in the Puget Sound region were expected to move there this summer.

The DJC reported in October 2017 that REI paid Wright Runstad $49 million for the 8 acres, which are part of the 36-acre district that Runstad and financial partner Shorenstein Properties are developing east of Interstate 405 on a former Safeway distribution center site.

“The dramatic events of 2020 have challenged us to reexamine and rethink every aspect of our business and many of the assumptions of the past. That includes where and how we work,” said REI President and CEO Eric Artz, in a video call with employees. “As a result, our new experience of ‘headquarters' will be very different than the one we imagined more than four years ago.”

An REI news release said the company will “lean into remote working as an engrained, supported and normalized model for headquarters employees, offering flexibility for more employees to live and work outside of the Puget Sound region and shrinking the co-op's carbon footprint.”

In early March, REI shifted to nearly 100% remote work for its headquarters staff in response to the pandemic.

“(This year) we learned that the more distributed way of working we previously thought untenable will instead unlock incredible potential,” Artz said. “This will have immediate, positive impacts on our ability to attract and retain a diverse and highly skilled workforce, as we continue to navigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.”

The news release said the sale of the Spring District campus will enable investments in customer innovations, REI's network of nonprofit partners and its carbon goals.

“I am confident that the sale of the Spring District campus would have a positive impact on REI's future — and yours,” Artz told employees. “This year has shown us our home is not a building. Our home is wherever we find ourselves doing our best work, pursuing our outdoor passions, serving our communities.”

REI's Bellevue campus consists of a two-story office building and a single-story public market (totaling about 255,000 square feet), and a five-story office building with ground-level retail (totaling about 422,700 square feet). There also are 876 parking stalls and extensive outdoor landscaping and green space.

REI's project team includes NBBJ, architect; GGN, landscape architect; and Howard S. Wright, a Balfour Beatty company, general contractor.