Nov 21, 2013

Omeros Building wins NAIOP award

Photos by Benjamin Benschneider for Omeros [enlarge]

BioMed Realty Trust won the Technology/Life Sciences Development of the Year from the Washington chapter of NAIOP for the Omeros Building, a five-story, 151,000-square-foot building at 201 Elliott Ave. W. About 77,000 square feet was converted to space for research and offices. Offices, meeting rooms and common spaces wrap around labs. A public cafe is at street level. Perkins + Will was the architect and GLY Construction was the general contractor. The Benaroya Co. also won a Technology/Life Sciences Development of the Year award for the Group Health Puyallup Medical Center.

Company-wide restructuring at KBS

Robertson

Richerson

KBS Realty Advisors has shifted some top executives and hired two asset managers as part of a company-wide restructuring. Rodney Richerson, vice president of the central region, will move over to the west region. Ken Robertson will replace Richerson as central region VP. Tim Helgeson will be a senior vice president and asset manager for Southern California, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. Brett Merz will be a senior vice president and asset manager for properties in Chicago, St. Louis and Louisville. KBS recently bought Seattle's Central Building for $34.5 million and owns 964,000 square feet of office space in Seattle, Bellevue and Bothell.

Employment up at Port of Skagit

Employment is up 27.8 percent this year at the Port of Skagit. There were 1,149 people working at the port in the third quarter, according to an employment census that showed port companies added 114 full-time this year. The port has 78 tenants, down six from this time last year.

State pays $97M for ‘community forest'

The Department of Ecology, Department of Natural Resources, Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Forterra bought more than 51,000 acres of land in the Yakima River Basin for $97 million. The land is north of Cle Elum and will be the first “community forest” in Washington, part of a five-year-old state DNR initiative that gives nearby communities a say in recreation, water quality, natural resource management, wildlife conservation and timber harvesting. Les Jacobowitz of Arent Fox LLP represented the seller, Bellingham-based American Forest Holdings.

Nov 14, 2013

Microsoft's Pittenger wins award

Jay Pittenger, senior regional director of real estate and facilities for Microsoft, was named Corporate Real Estate Executive of the Year by the Washington state chapter of CoreNet Global. Pittenger is in charge of the 15 million-square-foot campus in Redmond as well as sites and campuses in North, Central and South America. CoreNet Global is a worldwide group for real estate executives and professionals.

Kilroy starts San Francisco projects

Los Angeles-based Kilroy Realty Corp., which owns several buildings in Seattle, broke ground on a two-building, 300,000-square-foot complex in Redwood City near San Francisco. It also got approval for a six-story, 170,000-square-foot office project in San Francisco's South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood. Kilroy is building campuses for LinkedIn and Synopsys in the Silicon Valley, and an office tower in downtown San Francisco for Salesforce.com. Kilroy owns buildings in Seattle, Bellevue and Kirkland, and recently paid $170 million for the Westlake/Terry buildings in South Lake Union.

Comcast opens opens Oregon office

Photo courtesy of Comcast [enlarge]

Comcast has a new office in Tigard, Ore., southwest of Portland. Approximately 325 employees will work in the 87,250-square-foot building at 11308 S.W. 68th Parkway. Gromatzky Dupree and Associates renovated the building, and Lease Crutcher Lewis was the general contractor. The building has large meeting rooms, one-on-one meeting areas and community spaces.