A pre-leasing requirement is typical, but given the tight Bellevue market and a development team that could develop the building without any financing, arranging the loan shouldn't be difficult. "For the right deal with the right sponsorship and the right capital structure, the banking community is more than willing to make construction loans into a good market on a speculative basis," Hawthorne says. "We're seeking both floating and fixed rate construction financing options and expect a very favorable response."

Washington Capital Management is a Seattle-based employee-owned investment advisory firm that invests pension fund monies in union-built developments. It acquired the Tower 333 development site at a foreclosure auction in a 2002. Hines is an international developer whose most recent Puget Sound projects include the 40-story, 845,000-sf IDX Tower at Fourth & Madison in Downtown Seattle, completed in 2002, and the five-story, 100,000-sf Evergreen Plaza in Kirkland that was completed in 2003.

Having acquired the development already excavated and built back up with three levels of parking, Tower 333 is set to come out of the ground several months ahead of three other Downtown office developments, all being built in response to a market that in the past 24 months has seen vacancy fall from more than 20% to the mid single digits. The first office project to get out of the ground in response to the demand--Kemper Development's 540,000-sf Lincoln Tower--is fully leased 12 months prior to completion to Eddie Bauer and Microsoft.