BELLEVUE, WASH. — A real estate investment fund backed by Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (NYSE: BAM) has purchased Block 16, a 343,528-square-foot office building in Bellevue fully leased to Facebook. A joint venture between Wright Runstad & Co., Shorenstein Properties and institutional investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management sold the recently completed property for $365 million.
Block 16 is part of The Spring District, a transit-oriented mixed-use development situated on the east side of Lake Washington from Seattle. Wright Runstad and Shorenstein Properties are the master developers of the campus, which sits south of Bellevue’s central business district near SoundTransit’s future Spring District/120th light rail station.
Spring District will ultimately feature 3 million square feet of creative office space, including REI’s headquarters that Facebook purchased last month for $390 million.
“The Spring District has become a choice location for high-quality office tenants in Bellevue,” says Greg Johnson, CEO of Seattle-based Wright Runstad.
In 2017, University of Washington’s Global Innovation Exchange building opened at Spring District, as well as over 800 residential units and several open spaces accessible to the public.
Wright Runstad plans to develop another 530,000 square feet of office space across two buildings at Spring District by 2023, which is when the Eastlink extension of Sound Transit is slated to begin service to Bellevue. Both office buildings are fully pre-leased to Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), according to The Spring District website.
Brookfield Asset Management is a global alternative asset management firm with approximately $550 billion of assets under management, including real estate, infrastructure, renewable power, private equity and credit.
The Toronto-based firm’s stock price closed on Thursday, Oct. 29 at US$29.97 per share, down from US$37.11 a year ago.
Facebook is headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., and has offices in 70 cities worldwide. The social media giant also owns 17 data centers in some stage of development around the country, with 13 located across the United States.
Facebook’s stock price closed on Thursday at $275.34 per share, up 46 percent from $188.25 a year ago.
— John Nelson