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April 9, 1999

Real Estate Buzz

By MARC STILES
Journal Real Estate editor

Hot demand for space in Galleria ... Impressive demand for space at The Galleria, the Eastside's new $23 million entertainment center, indicates how badly Bellevue wants to grow up and be a 24-hour city.

Of the 168,000 square feet, all but 7,000 has been taken, and that won't last long, said commercial real estate broker Mark Anderson, who came up with the concept for the downtown mega block nine years ago and wrote the master plan. That was when he worked at Radford & Co.; now he works for Colliers International.

"To me it was really obvious," said Anderson, who did the leasing with Colin Radford. Anderson recalled the days when Bellevue turned into "a total ghost town" after 5 p.m. Even if the solution was obvious, it took plenty of study and tweaking to turn the property into a major entertainment center.

Anderson started slowly. He brought in Barnes & Noble and the Good Guys. He convinced the former property owner, Puget Western, not to turn part of the block into office and instead go with an entertainment-type tenant, California Pizza Kitchen. And he got Tower Records to move to The Galleria, where it will offer live entertainment on weekends.

Schroeder USA of Vancouver, B.C., bought The Galleria property from Puget Western and redesigned the project. "We had to change this thing 100 different times before we had it figured out," Anderson said.

One thing The Galleria is not is a mall, Anderson emphasized. Folks can see a movie at the 11-screen Bellevue Cinema; view art at the Eastside's largest private gallery, Sahara Fine Arts; hear live entertainment in venues as diverse as Tower and Rock Bottom Brewery; get pampered at Gene Juarez, which at almost 24,000 square feet is the largest salon and spa in the Northwest; and play virtual reality video games at The Garage and another soon to-be-announced arcade.

Opening The Galleria, which is occurring in phases, isn't the end. Sterling Realty Organization, the other larger property owner on the block, plans to convert the old Tower building into a retail center of high-end clothing and home furnishing shops. Peter Bassiri, who runs art and home furnishing shops, may open a multi-level showroom on property he owns, according to Anderson.

Ultimately, this is about Bellevue morphing from a sterile, characterless suburb into a thriving urban center. Why else would there be some 3,000 apartment units planned for downtown? That's easy, said Anderson. "Now, there's something to do."

Back on this side of the lake... Renovation of the Polson Building, the six-story structure at 71 Columbia St., continues. It has been vacant since a May 1996 arson. Rumors about this architectural firm or that public relations agency moving into the building have been bubbling for months. Now, we can bring you some solid news.

Current, a high-end furniture store now up the street in the 1201 Western Building, will move into the 12,668-square-foot retail space on the first floor in September, according to Current employee Paul Hitt.

Hitt and others say they've heard the rest of the building has been taken. Among the rumored tenants are THINK Seattle, a PR firm, on the top two floors and Mahlum Architects, one of Seattle's most prominent design firms, on the fourth floor. No leads yet on who's taking floors two and three, but word is that the building is fully leased with architectural firms.

The brokers in charge of leasing the building, Stanley Piha of Stanley Real Estate and Frank Buchanan of MaKensay Real Estate Services, declined to comment.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers... is reviewing developer Opus Northwest's application for a wetlands permit for the 719,000-square-foot Northpointe Corporate Center in Lynnwood. Actually, Penteum Properties of Seattle owns the land and is the official applicant; Opus has the land under contract.

Opus officials aren't expecting any permitting problems for the office park north of the Interstates 5/405 interchange. "The time the Corps needs to process the application is in line with the critical path of the project," said Tom Parsons, Opus Northwest real estate director. Site work could start this summer, he added.

Can you stand... more scuttlebutt about Starwave taking the last big space at the newly renovated and expanded Smith Tower? First, we hear it is a deal and then we hear it's not. The latest is that it is.

Here what our in-the-know source says about the Bellevue Web development company's Smith Tower plans: "Based on the information I have, I'd give it higher than 90 percent that it is going to happen."

Broker Ron Leibsohn of Leibsohn and Co., a Starwave representative, would not comment.

Attention residential agents... Careful whom you show that fancy house to. An Inman News Features story tells why with a report on an Anchorage agent, Gary Contul, who didn't know he was being set up when two teens asked to see a $480,000 house.

The teens claimed their parents were in the market and asked to check out the abode. Once inside, the youngsters split up and left windows and locks open. Then it was back to school to post fliers about a par-tay at the house. A fellow agent heard about the scam and tipped off the cops, who arrested the revelers as they arrived.

Another house had received the full teen-party treatment earlier. The little darlings trashed rooms, left water running and plugged drains. The total damage was, ka-ching, $25,000.



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