Buchanan Sourcing $110M Spec Office Project

BELLEVUE, WA-Hines and Washington Capital Management have tapped Buchanan Street Partners to arrange $110 million in construction financing for Tower 333, a 465,244-sf 20-story Downtown office development that will fill a five-year-old hole in the ground. Buchanan Street EVP Tim Hawthorne tells GlobeSt.com it expects to secure speculative financing, which is to say there will be no pre-leasing hurdle to clear before the loan is funded.

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.