November 3, 2020

Mass timber office building underway on Mercer Island

Rendering by by Public47 Architects [enlarge]

Project owner East Seattle Partners will occupy its new LEED Gold headquarters, which replaces its old building, next summer or fall.

Four years ago, a small old Mercer Island office building sold for almost $1.6 million to an LLC associated with private investment firm East Seattle Partners, which until last year had its offices there. The old Skelton Building, at 2856 80th Ave. S.E., was demolished last fall.

Now under construction is a three-story mass-timber office building designed by Public47 Architects. (The city also calls it a two-story building with mezzanine.) It’ll be the new headquarters for the owner. The hybrid project will employ cross-laminated timber, or CLT, plus some structural steel. Completion is expected by the third quarter of next year.

The team also includes Shilshole Development, general contractor; DCI, structural and civil engineer; Karen Kiest Landscape Architect; Safe Consulting, electrical; PAE Engineers, mechanical, electrical and fire engineering; Unico Sustainability, LEED consultant; Terrane, surveyor; and Geotech Consultants.

The new building will have 12,100 square feet of offices above structured parking with 17 stalls, some of them stacked. It’ll be perched on the corner of Southeast 30th Street, next to a Bank of America branch. The site totals 6,588 square feet. It’s east of the Town Center commercial area, and slightly west of Island Crest Way.

There will be a large, landscaped terrace on the third floor. A central atrium will illuminate the lower floors. Rooftop solar panels are indicated for the project, which is targeting LEED Gold certification.

Other green features will include LED lighting, high efficiency heating/cooling systems and high efficiency plumbing/irrigation systems, bike parking with eight stalls and a shower room for cycle commuters. The site is also walkable to Mercer Island Station, where light rail service will begin in 2023.

Mass timber projects have a smaller carbon footprint than comparable concrete and steel buildings. Their pre-cut elements also trim the construction schedule, meaning less waste and fewer trucks shuttling to and from the jobsite.

The project is one of a growing handful of mass timber projects in the region. Most are apartments, though Clark Barnes is designing an eight-story hotel on the old Ballard Blossom site; and LMN designed the two-story, 46,700-square-foot office project now under construction near Carillon Point in Kirkland. Also in Kirkland, owner Rena Ware is planning a three-story, 35,000-square-foot headquarters building with Freiheit Architecture and Swinerton Mass Timber.

East Seattle Partners was established six years ago by the veteran healthcare executive and investor Alan Frazier, formerly of Immunex. His separate Frazier Healthcare Partners was founded in 1991. That private equity firm has raised and managed over $4 billion in assets.

East Seattle Partners specifically eschews healthcare investments. Instead it invests in local startups and businesses — including AutoSpa, Mod Pizza, eventcore and Proprio — and real estate.

In the latter category, it lists the Saxonia, a recently renovated apartment complex in Uptown; and a renovation/addition to an Anhalt apartment building on Capitol Hill. Both were done with Trinity Real Estate and Public47. ESP and Trinity also own the Theo Chocolate building in Fremont.

Though Frazier has a national if not international reputation for savvy healthcare and biotech investments, his experience in real estate predates that. For the University of California’s Venture Capital Oral History Project, he told his interviewer in 2009 that while in college at the University of Washington — paying his way as a Lucky grocery cashier — he and a friend bought a duplex, flipped it and made money.

“I loved that. It was my first taste of entrepreneurship,” he said. “That was a lot of fun. I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going to go, real estate being kind of in the toilet there at the time I graduated from college” [1973].

After that, he managed an Oregon bus firm’s office, became an accountant at Arthur Young & Co. (later Ernst & Young, now EY) and later joined Immunex in 1983. There, he eventually rose to CFO and executive VP. That company sold to Amgen in 2002 for about $16 billion.