The development site is a full city block bordered by Westlake Avenue North to the west, Terry Avenue North to the east, Harrison Street to the north and Thomas Street to the south. It will be a short move for Group Health. The company's current headquarters are located in leased space at 6th Avenue and Wall Street, one block off the intersection of Denny Way and Aurora Avenue (Highway 99).
The new facility will house about 700 of the approximately 10,000 employees of Group Health Cooperative, Group Health Permanente and Group Health Options Inc., including the executive leadership team. The deal is being structured as a lease and a joint venture, with Group Health sharing an undisclosed ownership interest with Vulcan, which will manage the development.
One of the buildings will be six stories and the other building will be four stories. The four-story building will front Terry Avenue and include 129,000 sf of office space and 6,000 sf of retail. The six-story building will from Westlake Avenue include 160,000 sf of office and 25,000 sf of retail. Approximately 100,000 sf of office and all of the retail is available for lease.
Vulcan's VP of real estate Ada Healey tells GlobeSt.com that Group Health will occupy all of the office space in the building fronting Terry Avenue. In the Westlake Avenue building, Group Health will occupy the second floor and a portion of the third floor. As for the retail, Healey says Vulcan would like to see a restaurant take the retail space in the Terry Avenue building and expects small-to-medium retailers in the Westlake Avenue building. Vulcan is marketing both the office and retail space on its own for the time being. "We may or may not engage a broker to help us with that," says Healey.
Vulcan expects the development will qualify for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, though it is not saying what level of certification it hopes to achieve. LEED is an industry measurement tool created by the U.S. Green Building Council to define green, environmentally and community-conscious projects. There are three levels of certification: Silver, Gold and Platinum.
Callison is the architect for the project and GLY is the general contractor. Group Health was represented by the Trammell Crow Co. brokers Thomas Abbott and Ray Attisha. Vulcan represented itself.
Group Health is a consumer-governed, nonprofit health care system that serves approximately 550,000 members in Washington and Idaho. Vulcan, the property arm of billionaire Paul Allen, owns approximately 60 acres in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood. In the past two years, Vulcan has delivered 650,000 sf of new developments. Another 900,000 sf is under development in 2005 and another 2.1 million sf is in the development pipeline.
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