Colliers International

Executive managing director: Rob Aigner

Specialty: Investment sales; office, retail and industrial leasing; apartment and hotel transactions; consulting; property management; corporate services; valuation and market research

Year founded: 1979

Local office: Seattle

“The office market in the north end (South Snohomish County) is still in pretty rough shape, although things are changing, we’re getting more tire-kickers in the market place and that’s a good sign,” said Greg Riva, senior vice president at Colliers International’s Seattle office. “The vacancy rate is 17 percent for that area (down from 17.8 percent in the second quarter) and the Lynnwood vacancy rate is at 31.6 percent.”

The submarket’s vacancy rate has been helped recently by Kirtley Cole Associates purchasing the 52,000-square-foot Everett Mall Office Park for $5.3 million for its new headquarters, using about 10,000 square feet of that space; the Stinsons bought the Terrace East Office Building in Everett for $2.25 million; and Star 1 LLC purchased the 19,000-square-foot Monroe Town Center building for $2.2 million. Also, Agilent leased 59,000 square feet of office space in the Everett Technology Park in Seaway Center.

To put the north end market into perspective, Riva noted that the vacant Lynnwood properties include large chunks of property in a relatively small office market.

The 203,000-square-foot, six-story Cosmos Lynnwood Center came on the market at the start of the plunge in the local economy and remains largely empty. Boeing vacated two large buildings in downtown Lynnwood in 2001 that left 236,000 square feet of class A office space on the market.

“If Boeing picks Everett for assembling its new 7E7 airliner, then you’ll see a lot more positive absorption in office space, as well as industrial space, which is in a similar lull right now with a 22.3 percent vacancy rate in the north end market,” Riva said.

Activity in the third quarter included Travis Industries moving from the Eastside into 475,000 square feet of Boeing’s long-empty Harbour Pointe facility in Mukilteo; Giddens Industries leased 112,000 square feet at Boeing’s BOMARC Business Park in south Everett and Fibres International leased 50,000 square feet at the same park.

“When Boeing put 1.1 million square feet of industrial property on the market a year ago it looked like it would take five to 10 years to fill that, but competitive rates and marketing has now filled half of that space, which is great news,” Riva said. “I think the recovery has begun. The rate of recovery is highly dependent on Boeing (and the 7E7 decision).”