SEATTLE—Arbor Blocks East and West is a class-A 388,072-square-foot office campus located at 300 and 333 8th Avenue North. Both newly constructed buildings are leased to Facebook Inc. on a long-term basis.

The asset recently sold to an unidentified buyer for an undisclosed purchase price. The seller was Seattle-based Vulcan Real Estate.

Situated in the south Lake Union submarket of Seattle, Arbor Blocks was delivered in 2018 and 2019, and consists of two six-story buildings with multi-level subterranean parking. The East building totals 197,274 square feet and the West building is 190,798 square feet. The campus includes a pedestrian- and bicycle-oriented living street along 8th Avenue North that promotes outdoor gatherings with public seating areas, specialty paving, landscaping and public art.

Newmark Knight Frank's co-head of US capital markets Kevin Shannon, vice chairman Nick Kucha, senior managing director Mike Moll, executive managing directors Rob Hannan, Ken White and Alex Foshay, and director Bill Delacy, in cooperation with NKF executive managing director Jesse Ottele, all represented the seller.

"Once again, Vulcan has developed a trophy office product that has set an all-time record price per square foot for Seattle, which happens frequently in healthy coastal markets that possess strong rent growth fundamentals," said Shannon.

According to NKF's third-quarter 2019 market report, the Lake Union office submarket has the lowest vacancy rate of all of eight of downtown Seattle's submarkets at 2.8%. Year-to-date, it has recorded slightly more than 1.11 million square feet of net absorption and currently has approximately 2.9 million square feet under construction.

"Facebook's tenant improvement build-out created a spectacular environment," Shannon tells GlobeSt.com. "The market rent for the property was approximately 25% below market at the time of sale because of the high quality of the tenant build-out in conjunction with continued strong double-digit rent growth in the submarket."

Arbor Blocks is located near the 5 Freeway, Highway 99, the Seattle Streetcar, the city's primary bicycle commuter corridor along Dexter Avenue, and numerous regional buses. It features a transit score of 94 and a walk score of 97.

"The ability to acquire a trophy bond-like investment in South Lake Union anchored by Facebook credit is incredibly rare," said Moll.

Instant Insights /

Buyer Jumps at Rare Chance for Trophy Facebook-Anchored Asset

Related Stories

Recommended For You