Bakery Equipment Maker Buys Boeing Building

KENT, WA-Boeing Realty Corp. last week closed on the sale of the Boeing Co.’s 106,000-sf 18-23 building located in the Kent Space Center, which sits within the Pacific Gateway Business Park. Belshaw Brothers Inc. a manufacturer of doughnut, bakery and food service equipment, acquired the building for $3.5 million and plans to convert it for use as its new headquarters-manufacturing facility, replacing several smaller buildings it currently occupies in Seattle’s south-end industrial district.Belshaw Bros. president Mike Bontatibus tells GlobeSt.com the company has operated in the same location–1750 22nd Avenue South–since its inception in 1923. Over the decades, it has cannibalized surrounding buildings and now occupies 77,000 sf in five buildings in the area and has manufacturing operations on two different floors. Last year it sold its properties to an investor and has been leasing back the space while it searched for new space, says Bontatibus.When the relocation will occur is still up in the air, he says, but it will go more smoothly because the company was able to find a building that was previously used for manufacturing. “Most of the existing available space is in warehouse-distribution buildings; former manufacturing space with good electrical capacity and good floor loading was tougher to find,” says Bontatibus. “It will be nice to have everything on one floor in one building.”Over the past three years, Boeing has consolidated its use of real estate in Kent with sales of buildings and land parcels in the master planned Pacific Gateway Business Park. In late 2004, Boeing sold a 29-acre parcel south of the Kent Space Center and two planned and newly constructed flex-tech buildings to the north. The balance of the Pacific Gateway Business Park was sold in 2003. Boeing also donated nine acres along the Green River in 2001 to the City of Kent for development of the Green River Trail.Boeing Realty Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Boeing Co. It directs all real estate strategies, acquisitions and dispositions, development and leasing worldwide for Boeing.