Development Rights Sale for WaMu Tower Heads to City Council

SEATTLE-The City Council will vote Monday on the sale of transferable development rights totaling 419,654 sf for $7.4 million to the developers of a proposed Downtown office building. The additional development rights, on top of the original base FAR of 464,760 sf, would allow construction of an 884,414-sf, 42-story office tower. The council’s Urban Planning & Development Committee signed off on the sale this week.Pine Street Group and the Seneca Real Estate Group are developing the building on behalf of Washington Mutual. Last May, WaMu and SAM formalized their $300-million agreement to develop separate buildings totaling 1.2 million sf on the same block. The block is bounded by First and Second avenues and Union and University streets. The southern third of the block is the existing Seattle Art Museum building.The project will result in WaMu’s new tower at Second and Union and a 12-story, 335,000-sf building for the Seattle Art Museum that will connect to the existing museum. Both structures will be built on an underground parking garage that will hold 710 vehicles on six levels. NBBJ is the bank’s design architect and the executive architect for SAM’s project. SAM’s design architect is Portland, OR-based Allied Works Architecture. Sellen Construction is the contractor. Project completion is slated for 2006. The new bank building will front on Second Avenue with street-level office lobby and retail uses. The SAM component will front on First Avenue and connect internally to the existing museum. SAM initially expects to occupy the ground floor and two levels of public and gallery space in the expansion. The rest of the space will be subleased to Washington Mutual until it is needed, according to the agreement. Washington Mutual currently occupies about 1.3 million sf of office space in Downtown Seattle in about one dozen buildings. With this new development, the company hopes to consolidate into a smaller number of buildings. Washington Mutual is Seattle’s only Fortune 100 company.