Opus Northwest
Specialty: Commercial real estate development
Principals: Tom Parsons, John Bartell, Harry Demarre
Year founded: 1953; 1994 in the Pacific Northwest
Local office: Bellevue
Photo courtesy Opus Northwest
Opus Northwest and Behar Co. developed the 401 Broadway project in Seattle. |
The region’s largest development company will continue working its traditional niches — industrial and office. The latter sector is picking up, especially among small and medium users looking at the Eastside and north end. Parsons pegged the number of lookers at over a dozen.
“A lot of people are starting to kick tires,” Parsons said. “We’ve got more prospects in the last 90 days than we have had in the last year.”
At Opus Northwest Corporate Centre near Lynnwood, Opus has some small office buildings planned, Parsons said. “Plus one we’re looking at building at Snoqualmie Ridge.
Parsons |
“There are other prospects in the downtown Seattle market,” he added. Opus Northwest is getting a master-use permit for an approximately 200,000-square-foot office at Seventh and Madison. The marquee corner is perched above Interstate 5, offering unobstructed views of the city skyline.
Opus Northwest may work as a development partner with the Samis Foundation on another downtown project. Samis has proposed a hotel/residential project of perhaps 35 stories at 1521 Second Ave. The Green Tortoise Hostel occupies the site, where a monorail stop could be built into the development.
“We are in dialogue with” Samis, Parsons said. “We are optimistic there’s an opportunity to help them with their project.”
Opus Northwest has had its first taste of residential development in Seattle. It teamed up with Holland Partners to build the 201-unit Dexter Apartments. The joint venture sold the project in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood this year for just over $40.3 million.
Parsons indicated Opus Northwest continues to look around South Lake Union for sites but added there’s “nothing that we can talk about.”
The company is starting to design and market a 180-unit condo project on Bainbridge Island. The site is just north of the ferry terminal.
On the retail front, the company continues building Bridgeport Village, a 485,000-square-foot retail and office project in Tualatin, Ore. Center Oak Properties, a Portland-area company that plans to build a major retail center in Renton, is Opus’ Bridgeport partner. Parsons said Opus is not working with them on the Renton project.
In the south end, more than three-quarters of Opus’ 250,000-square-foot retail project, Federal Way Crossings, is under lease or letter of intent, according to Parsons, who anticipates construction will begin this spring.
Opus Northwest is planning mixed-use retail projects with $200 million of these in the pipeline, he said.
The company has begun building on spec a 430,000-square-foot industrial building at Sumner Landing North. “We have several proposals out for space in the project, but have not signed a tenant as of today.”
At Opus Northwest’s 73-acre site at Northwest Landing in DuPont, the company sold a 13.5-acre site to Dania, which paid $3.80 per square foot.
Three other users are zeroing in on the rest of the land. “We believe we’ll have sold all 73 acres by the first quarter of next year,” Parsons said.
At Opus Park 167 in Auburn, the company has constructed two buildings totaling about 160,000 square feet. The project is more than 70 percent leased. It includes both grade-level business park space for small users and dock-high space for medium-sized tenants. It’s next to the SuperMall and has attracted home furnishing and home improvement showroom retailers.
Opus Northwest was one of the first developers to discover Bremerton and is playing a key role in the city’s renaissance. The company partnered with Kitsap County on a new conference center and worked on related projects. Now it’s working as the design-builder of a 65,000-sqare-foot office for a credit union.
The National Association of Office and Industrial Properties named Opus Northwest and partner Behar Co.’s 401 Broadway in Seattle the 2004 Office Development of the Year. It was a kind of public-private partnership with King County. “We are hopeful there will be more opportunities like that,” Parsons said.