Bridge Development Partners wrapped up the $24.6 million, year-end purchase of outdoor gear retailer REI Co-op’s longtime headquarters in Kent, Washington, a suburb to Seattle’s south where it plans to replace the offices with warehouses.
The deal for the 15.9-acre site, which REI had called home from the late 1980s until this year, follows the sale of the retailer’s newly built headquarters campus in Bellevue to social media giant, Facebook, which paid $367.6 million for the property in mid-September.
The Kent transaction, which amounts to roughly $1.55 million per acre, is a clear sign that the suburb’s already outsized value as a logistics and warehouse destination is further overtaking its historically rather desultory office sector. The city offers logistics firms several location advantages, being close to two major seaports, the international airport and threaded by several different interstate highways.
In late summer, Chicago-based Bridge filed paperwork with the city proposing to raze the four-building office campus at 6750 S. 228th St. and build two new warehouses there, according to documents submitted to the state’s Dept. of Ecology for review. The site plan shows one 254,000-square-foot building and a smaller sibling, about 49,000 square feet in size.
//costar.com
