1201 Third Ave. Tower Nears Deal

By Alex Girda, Associate Editor

Seattle has seen its fair share of massive office deals this year, with the most prominent of them the acquisition of the Russell Investments Building and Amazon.com’s move to buy its office campus from Vulcan Real Estate. Next on the list is the 1201 Third Ave. tower downtown. Estimates from real estate professionals have placed the eventual transaction value at around $500 million, but new reports have the building trading more in the $550 million range.

According to “Real Estate Alert” and the Puget Sound Business Journal, a partnership of insurance giant MetLife and real estate investment management company Clarion Partners is now vying for the property, as is Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec’s real estate unit, Ivanhoe Cambridge.

The seller is Boston-based Beacon Capital. The 55-story building offers up 1.1 million square feet of space, 20 percent of which is currently vacant. No reports on the status of the deal have transpired yet, but the increasing buzz clearly indicates that the completion is growing closer.

1201 Third Ave. is one of four properties that Beacon Capital has put up for sale in the greater Seattle area. The other three have been bundled together as a single deal and include U.S. Bank Plaza, Plaza East and Plaza Center, all in nearby Bellevue. They were acquired by the company in 2007 as part of a 42-building portfolio acquisition. Beacon paid $6.4 billion to Blackstone to secure the massive office portfolio.