Downtown Developing in Bedroom Community

MILL CREEK, WA-Retailers are apparently quite interested in helping create a Downtown for this Seattle bedroom community. After landing tenants for the vast majority of the 30,000-sf Park Place Center, developer Red Jacobsen has hired Tyler Jones of Bellevue-based Leibsohn & Co. to begin pre-leasing Creekside Village, a Tuscan-style outdoor shopping area that will offer at least 42,000 sf split evenly between retail and office space.

Jones tells GlobeSt.com there are about 3,300 sf of retail and 2,700 sf of office space that remains available at the one-building Park Place Center. Creekside, he says, will be a five-building development. Two of the buildings will be 19,500 sf and 15,600 sf, while the other three buildings will be 7,800 sf, 1,500 sf and 1,250 sf. The two smallest buildings will be situated on either side of a public amphitheater.

As opposed to the 150,000-sf grocery-anchored retail center being developed across the street, Jones says Creekside will be comprised of upscale, lifestyle-type tenants, such as higher-end home accessory and children’s apparel retailers. “It’s going to be a real comfortable place where people can come walk around and enjoy themselves,” says Jones.

Though no LOIs have been signed, Jones says negotiations are under way for 40% of the space. The goal is to have enough pre-leasing to get the project under way in March. Annual triple-net asking rates for the retail space range from $27- to $31 per sf. The asking rate for the office space, which is being “condo-ized,” is $2.75 per sf.

Jones says he expects Creekside to lease up to national retailers, and he’s had some help from the city in making it happen. To assist in the project’s attractiveness, city officials commissioned a $50,000 demographic study that has to look pretty good to said retailers.

Based on data from the study, compiled this fall, at least 20,000 vehicles each day already pass in front of where Mill Creek Town Center is rising. Moreover, some 86,661 people currently reside within a five-minute drive of the development site, and the average household income is more than $82,000. Better still, 40% of the households are married couples or married couples with children, the types of households that spend the most money on electronics and home improvements.