'The Hutch' Takes 100,000 SF at 1616 Eastlake

SEATTLE-Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has leased the majority of 1616 Eastlake, a 165,000-sf building acquired last year by publicly traded Alexandria Real Estate Equities for $34.7 million. Fred Hutch, as it is known, will use the space to consolidate its HIV/AIDS work, which is currently housed in three buildings elsewhere in the city. The move is scheduled for this fall.

The lease is for all of the fourth and fifth floors and part of the second floor of the five-story building, which is close to its main campus at the south end of Lake Union. The terms of the lease were not immediately available, and executives at Pasadena, CA-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities did not return phone calls seeking comment. The base lease rate at the REIT’s other Eastlake buildings is in the low $40s per sf per year, according to the company’s most recent SEC filing.

Fred Hutch will share the second floor with Accelerator Corp., a biotech incubator project of Alexandria, three venture capital firms and the Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology. The third floor of the building remains available.