The 2.5-acre development site is located at the corner of 106th Avenue Northeast and Northeast Fourth Street in the heart of Downtown Bellevue, near Bellevue Square mall and the new Lincoln Square mixed-use development. Demolition of the former Puget Sound Energy headquarters on the property is complete; site excavation was slated to begin Wednesday.

SKB senior vice president Steve Wong tells GlobeSt.com that work on the retail pedestal will begin in June and construction of the actual towers will get under way in January 2007. Project completion is scheduled for the fall of 2008.

Curved glass curtain walls will let natural light into to the buildings, saving on energy costs. The project, which also will incorporate renewable building materials, is expected to receive a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Project designers are Bellevue's Mulvanny G2 Architecture and GBD Architects of Portland.

Bellevue Towers is one of several high-rise urban luxury residential projects on the West Coast for which SKB is providing equity; the others are located in Downtown Los Angeles' South Park neighborhood, in Northwest Portland, Ore. and along the Willamette River in Downtown Portland.

"Our Los Angeles condominium project launch sold out in eleven hours," SKB Principal Robert Scanlan tells GlobeSt.com "In Portland, our two riverfront developments, the Strand and the John Ross, are 65% and 70% pre-sold, respectively, and the Westerly at Uptown Shopping Center in Northwest Portland, which broke ground this month, has 80 advance reservations for 104 units."

As for the condo market in Bellevue, Scanlan points to two other Downtown projects. The first is One Lincoln Tower, a 42-story mixed-use building by local developer Kemper Freeman that includes 148 luxury condominium units in the upper half of the building and a hotel below. All of the residential units have been sold out for months, says Scanlan, with the last 73 units sold at an average price in excess of $625 per square foot.

The second is Washington Square, a planned five-tower condominium development by Utah-based Wasatch Development Associates. After quickly pre-selling the first tower's 175 units during a two-day preview event last week that attracted upward of 2,000 people--which reportedly caused logistical problems and prompted complaints from prospective purchasers--company officials decided to switch to a lottery system for units in the second tower. The towers will be in the 20-story range. The first two are slated for completion in the fall of 2007. Units are priced from $375,000 to $1 million. Sales prices in the first tower are averaging $635 per sf, local sources tells GlobeSt.com.

Being a higher-end product with larger units, Bellevue Towers is expected to have an average sale price approaching the top end of that range, says Scanlan. Units will start at $400,000 for a 700-sf unit and rise to more than $7 million for a 6,000-sf penthouse. A sales office for Bellevue Towers will open in July in the Key Bank building at 10655 N.E. Fourth St. The project Web site is www.bellevuetowers.com.