Eastside Sterling Plaza Complex Leases to Dot-Coms

FACTORIA, WA-Sterling Plaza One has signed a five-year lease renewal with its largest tenant, EarthLink Inc. The regional customer support-call center office of the Atlanta-based Internet service provider occupies 65,000 sf in the six-story office building at 3535 128th Ave. With the renewal, the 132,240-sf building is fully leased.

The leasing agent for Sterling Plaza, Richard Larson of Colliers International’s Bellevue office, says EarthLink’s gross price per sf was “in the low 20s.” The building’s owner, Sterling Realty Organization Co. of Bellevue, has a sister building in the works on the same site. The five-story Sterling Plaza II broke ground in July and is set for completion in February. It will contain 100,000 sf of office space, which has already been leased to a single tenant, Stamps.com, an Internet provider of mailing and shipping solutions for businesses.

When asked what special provisions Sterling requires of dot-com tenants, Larson answered that letters of credit in the $500,000 to $1M million range are generally negotiated. Though he wasn’t sure of the exact amounts asked of EarthLink Inc. and Stamps.com, he remarked, “since (dot-coms) are such a risk, I’m sure they had to put quite a bit down.”