Sabey Corp.

Specialty: Real estate development, investments, construction services

Management: Dave Sabey, CEO and president

Founded: 1972

Headquarters: Tukwila

Current projects: Developer of James Tower Life Sciences Building; general contractor on the $30 million Seattle Neuroscience Institute at Swedish Medical Center at Providence

Photo courtesy of Sabey Corp. The James Tower Life Sciences Building brings 12,000 new jobs and $50 million in annual salaries to Seattle’s Central Area, according to Sabey Corp.

To assess what kind of year Sabey Corp. has had, Dave Sabey points out that NAIOP named his company’s James Tower Life Sciences Building Best Redevelopment/Renovation of the Year.

And the company was a finalist not only for the Washington chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties’ Developer of the Year award but Office Development of the Year as well. The latter was for the Department of Homeland Security project at Sabey’s Intergate project.

“Our peers think we’re doing pretty well,” says Sabey, who anticipates a strong 2006.

Two hot markets

Sabey thinks Seattle’s future is in health care and digital communication. So in Tukwila, he developed Sabey DataCenter, the flagship facility at Intergate.Seattle. Sabey says the 1.5 million-square-foot Intergate is the largest multi-tenant data center and Internet campus in the world.

“The demand for digital space is absolutely exploding,” he says.

Sabey would not say how much space remains at Intergate. It’s not a matter of how much space is left but what kind of space is available. The wired space costs about $1,000 a square foot, but the shell cost is only $50 a foot. “The space we’ve got for $1,000 a square foot is all gone.”

Will Sabey expand Intergate? “Stay tuned,” he says.

In Seattle’s Central Area, Sabey owns 40 percent of the Swedish Medical Center/Providence Campus. In 2005, he finished the renovation/expansion of the old Providence Hospital into James Tower Life Sciences Building. It measures 308,000 square feet, and different users have leased a total of 127,000 square feet. A couple of deals are in the works that will push the building to 80 percent occupied, Sabey says.

More medical

Last month, Sabey’s company started work as general contractor on the $30 million Seattle Neuroscience Institute at Swedish Medical Center at Providence.

Sabey is hardly done at Swedish’s Providence campus. The company owns most of the half block east of the campus, and there’s room to develop atop the campus parking garage. Sabey says the campus master plan allows for development of another 500,000 square feet of space.

His ultimate goal is to brand Seattle as a top-flight medical center that will serve domestic and international patients.