September 7, 2022

Microsoft pays over $37M for future EV fleet site

Rendering by NBBJ [enlarge]

Buildings will be topped by scores of solar panels.

Microsoft paid over $37.6 million last week for an old industrial complex at 19150 N.E. Union Hill Road , according to King County records. The seller, via an LLC, was the Jewell family, which had owned the property since the mid-1960s, and has run Olympian Precast there for decades.

Microsoft is planning a large new EV charging facility for what it calls the Commute & Shuttle Fleet, which currently has some 290 vehicles — mostly green-and-white Connector buses. NBBJ is designing the facility, which has three components.

A central mixed-use office and maintenance building will have two stories with about 46,500 square feet. South of that, on the corner of 192nd Avenue Northeast, will be a three-story structured parking garage for employees, topped with many solar panels. That'll have about 215 stalls, 65 of which will have EV charging capacity.

And on the north, uphill side of the property will be a very large covered bus parking structure, with about 250 stalls, with a roof covered with even more solar panels.

The team also includes Coughlin Porter Lundeen, civil engineer; and OAC services, project manager. NBBJ is also the landscape architect.

Microsoft's tentative timeline is to break ground in about two years, with completion anticipated in 2026. SEPA review is required. No general contractor is indicated as of now.

(Update: Microsoft said in a statement after deadline that everything in its pre-application packet is subject to change, including the architect, and that it didn’t wish to commit to a schedule or team members. The DJC stands by its initial report.)

Brokers were not announced. For the land, the deal was worth about $107 per square foot. The 8-acre property has two old buildings that date to 1966; those will eventually be razed.

Microsoft says in its application to the city that it's converting its entire current fleet of buses with internal combustion engines to “zero-emission vehicles (ZEV), which will require additional power service, bus maintenance and charging.”

The application continues, “The building facility will include operations, supporting office space, vehicle maintenance, parts storage and structured parking for employees, and shuttle vehicles.” Underground water detention tanks will contain and clean the water from bus washing and surface parking runoff.

Microsoft has a larger goal of being carbon negative for its entire expanded Redmond campus, where new construction is ongoing. Including its supply chain and data centers, the company hopes to be carbon negative by 2030.

The Olympian property is east of downtown and the Swedish Redmond Campus, and just west of Martin Park and Evans Creek. Microsoft's Millennium Campus is also a short walk to the west.

Olympian is a family-run company founded in the 1920s. Its various products have been used at the Seattle Asian Art Museum expansion, University Village's newer structures, Hill7, Southport and other projects.

The company may have a lease-back agreement in place with Microsoft, possibly unrecorded by the county.