Davis Wright Tremaine Inks 170,000-SF HQ Lease

SEATTLE-The law firm Davis Wright Tremaine has signed a 12-year lease for 170,000 sf of office space at 1201 Third Ave. that is currently occupied by the building’s namesake, Washington Mutual. DWT will move its headquarters to the building in 2007, when Washington Mutual moves its headquarters to a building it is developing at Second Avenue and Union Street. DWT will be relocating from Century Plaza at 1501 Fourth Ave., where it has kept its headquarters for the past 20 years. The lease for floors 17-24 at Washington Mutual Tower will backfill 80% of the space that Washington Mutual plans to vacate, says Michael Finch, the in-house leasing agent for Wright Runstad & Co., which owns and manages Washington Mutual Tower in partnership with Equity Office Properties and others. The lease includes future expansion options.Washington Mutual Tower is a 1.1-million-sf class A office building that was completed in 1988. The 55-story building is currently 99% leased in a market with an overall average vacancy of closer to 15%. Asking full-service lease rates in the building range from $32 to $36 per sf per year, which compares to an average full-service asking rate for class A space in the Seattle’s financial district of $28.54. Without going into specifics, Finch tells GlobeSt.com the lease transaction was a “market rate deal for the time period that we are talking about.” If DWT signed on at an average lease rate of $30 per sf, the lease deal would have a full-service value of more than $61 million.Once the moves take place, DWT will be the third largest tenant in the building. The law firm Perkins Coie will be the largest tenant in the buidling, with 270,000 sf, and Washington Mutual will continue to occupy a little more than 200,000 sf in the building.