Local Lender Funds Utah Construction Loan

PORTLAND-The local office of Washington Capital Management has provided $11.5 million in construction financing for the completion of Gateway III, a 115,000-sf class A office building in Downtown Salt Lake City. The project, being developed by the Boyer Co., is part of a 2.5 million-sf, $375-million urban redevelopment project that began being delivered in late 2001, a year before the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.

The 28-acre project, the largest in the city’s history, covers three city blocks and is centered around the historic and completely renovated Union Pacific Depot, which sits across the street from the Delta Center and three blocks from Temple Square and the Salt Palace Convention Center. The two other office buildings in the project, the 160,000-sf Gateway I and the 81,000-sf Gateway II, have been completed and substantially leased up, according to John Bradshaw, president of Salt Lake City-based Western Capital Realty Advisors, which participated in the loan.

Gateway III was started a couple of years ago on the strength of a prelease commitment from a tenant in another of the Boyer Gorup’s builidngs. Construction was halted when the dot-com bubble burst and the tenant ran into financial difficulty. The building is now being completed on a speculative basis at a cost of $18 million.