Bedford Lands 60,000-SF Tenant for Time Square

RENTON, WA-The locally based collections company ER Solutions has signed a 60,320-sf lease of Time Square, a five-building, 330,000-sf complex here that was fully leased to Boeing until about 14 months ago and is now back on the market as a multi-tenant campus. The owner of the complex, publicly traded Bedford Property Investors of Lafayette, CA, has been using the downtime to prepare the complex for re-tenanting.A subsidiary of Convergent Resources Inc., ER Solutions provides receivables collections services to creditors in the retail, telecommunications, and utilities industries. The lease of Building 800 brings the campus to 24% leased. In December, Ticor Title and the City of Seattle singed the first leases at Time Square, taking down a combined 20,000 sf in the 600 Building, another 60,000-sf building. The negotiated lease rates on the deals have not been revealed. The asking rate is $20 per sf per year, including $6 per sf in annual operating expenses. Pacific Real Estate Partners has the leasing assignment.Time Square is located near the SW 41st St. exit from Highway 167. Built in 1986, the 22.6-acre campus is comprised of four 60,000-sf buildings and one 90,000-sf building. Bedford acquired the complex in July 1997 for $33 million and has since invested another $2.2 million in improvements, according to the company’s annual report released in March. In a November SEC filing, company officials said the “believe that the Puget Sound area is still experiencing the effects of significant job loss resulting from the technology and telecommunication industry slowdowns, resulting in “excess space … and weaker deal terms.” Time Square is one of four developments Bedford owns in the Puget Sound Region. The others are the Highlands Campus Tech Center, a three building, 201,000-sf tilt-up office complex in Bothell, WA, and a two building 180,000-sf office development on South 344th Way in Federal Way, WA. In November, Bedford sold a 297,228-sf, two-building office complex in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood for $65.7 million. The property is 93% leased to San Jose, CA-based Adobe Systems. The new owner is Hamburg, Germany-based Deutsche Immobilien Fonds AG, which in 2003 acquired the 20-story Millennium Tower in Downtown Seattle.