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“Nabbefeld”
Joe Nabbefeld
Real Estate Editor

July 27, 2000

Real Estate Buzz

Regal is up to 760,000 square feet in Fife

The fast-growing cargo hauler Regal Logistics completed its third building purchase in Fife from developer Opus Northwest.

Regal, based in Fife, paid Opus $10.3 million for the 235,000-square-foot warehouse structure in Opus' Fife Landing project.

The price equals $43.80 per square foot.

The purchase brings Regal to owning and occupying 760,125 square feet in Fife Landing. Broker Todd Clarke of Kidder Mathews & Segner, who represented both parties in the latest deal, said there's no reason to suspect Regal's growth won't continue, too.

Regal specializes in shipping toys produced in Southeast Asia. The company began shifting its base from New Jersey to Fife in 1986 to be on the West Coast. Regal, headed by Roc Neeves, wound down its East Coast operations last year.

Regal's first Fife activities were in a 100,000-square-foot warehouse that Regal bought in 1987. This structure is outside of the Fife Landing property. Last year Regal bought two newly built Fife Landing structures totaling 525,125 square feet from Bellevue-based Opus for $20.9 million and sold Opus the 100,000-square-foot building for $4.5 million.

Regal remains an Opus tenant in the 100,000-square-footer, next to which Opus is constructing an 82,000-square-foot industrial building. Wasser High-tech Coatings has agreed to lease about half of that new building, Clarke said.

The three Regal buildings comprise the entire Fife Landing project, so Opus is done with that.

Opus now has a separate set of industrial buildings under development nearby collectively called Fife Landing North. Opus has two structures totaling about 100,000 square feet under construction there. The developer plans a 30,000-square-foot lab building there that Sound Analytical would buy and occupy.

Fife Landing includes another 15 developable acres, for which Opus is talking to possible tenants for up to 200,000 square feet, Clarke said.


Norberg may not get to slow down

Doug Norberg thoughthe was going to retire. How hard that can be to pull off at the height of a stature one worked all their life to reach.

The 25-year veteran of Wright Runstad & Co. recently resigned as president and chief financial officer of the high-powered Seattle office development firm, as Tuesday's DJC outlined. But the 59-year-old said yesterday that his plan to kick back went immediately on hold because he's acting CEO of the Poulsbo-based timber company Pope Resources.

Pope president and CEO Gary Tucker left in May in what he called a return to retirement. Pope had brought him out of retirement years earlier to become the publicly-traded company's president and CEO.

Norberg said he has sat on Pope's board for the past four years. Pope put out a statement when Tucker retired saying Norberg and board member Peter Pope would "play a more active role in management" during a search for a new CEO. Since June, Norberg has served as "lead director for day-to-day operations," or acting CEO, he said. He puts in two or three days a week on the job, he said.

Norberg last fall said he planned to retire as Wright Runstad president at the end of last year. Wright Runstad's board accepted his resignation at a late June board meeting.

Pope owns about 75,000 acres of tree farms and manages 600,000 acres of forest land along the West Coast, Norberg said.


Meanwhile, Runstad still to build new Amazon space

Amazon.com's give-back of 80,000 square feet of office space at Union Station doesn't change Wright Runstad's plan to construct 215,000 square feet next to Amazon.com's headquarters at the PacMed Tower on Beacon Hill, said Wright Runstad chairman Jon Runstad.

Wright Runstad placed Amazon.com in PacMed and the e-tailer committed to lease the newly built space, to be called the Amazon North Building.

Wright Runstad has construction under way on a parking garage north of the PacMed Tower. When that construction finishes toward the end of this year, Wright Runstad expects to start constructing the new office space on what is now surface parking.

The developer initially designed the new space as three buildings but Runstad said it's now one structure. Wright Runstad needed its city master use permit in hand before it could start building the garage.

Runstad said a deal with a financial partner on the Amazon North Building is nearly put together. Equity Office Properties Trust, part owner of Wright Runstad and partner in most of Wright Runstad's deals lately, isn't the financial partner or otherwise involved in this project, Runstad said.


Matsushita deal closes

Microchip Technology on Wednesday closed its $80 million purchase of the Matsushita microchip plan in Puyallup, reports Colliers International.

Matsushita Semiconductor Corp. of America sunk huge amounts of money, to the tune of $250 million, to expand the plant, but closed the plant down as the work finished and put the 93-acre property up for sale because the microchip market shifted.

Arizona-based Microchip emerged as the buyer a couple months ago. The company says it will eventually employ more than 1,000 people at the plant, a boon for Puyallup. Microchip expects to begin installing wafer processing equipment in November and start producing chips there by next August.

Broker Stephen Rothrock, who led a Colliers team that marketed the property for Matsushita, said the deal closed fast.


Infospace deal won't dislodge Go2Net

Go2Net will remain in 80,000 newly renovated square feet on Pier 70 on the downtown Seattle waterfront even if Redmond-based Infospace completes buying Go2Net, the company said.

The two Internet companies announced yesterday that Infospace agreed to buy Go2Net (see the Periscope column on Page 1).

Go2Net moved this month onto the pier, owned and renovated by Triad Development. A Go2Net spokeswoman said the company will remain there as well as continue occupying 36,000 square feet atop the Wells Fargo Tower in downtown Seattle. Go2Net employes about 500 people, some of them in 11 satellite offices around the country.


Loc8.net took an option, too

Buzz aficionados already know that Loc8.net (pronounced locate.net) signed a 41,500-square-foot lease to become the first signed tenant for developer Eugene Horbach's planned 20-story Bellevue Technology Tower.

(If you don't know that, promptly decommission yourself as a Buzz aficionado and call in with a hot tip to earn re-commissioning. Don't embarrass yourself by telling anyone in the meantime.)

Loc8.net CEO Michael Crowson said this week that the deal includes an option to double that space from two to four floors as the digital tracking device maker grows.

Loc8.net now occupies about 7,000 square feet in Carillon Point in Kirkland.

Horbach has cleared the tower site at Northeast Fourth Street and 108th Avenue Northeast but has yet to dig into the ground to begin the big spending that marks the start of construction.


WatchMark signs Bellevue lease

WatchMark Corp. signed a 31,950-square-foot lease in the Columbia Place Building on Northup Way in Bellevue. WatchMark plans to move more than 100 employees there by fall.



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