Tempe Gateway, for example, was developed by Opus West and completed in 2009. The building is located in the heart of downtown Tempe, a transit-oriented community characterized by a variety of housing, office and retail services. It offers an amenity-rich location with a light rail stop outside the project, situated next door to the Tempe Town Lake, surrounded by restaurants and shopping as well as in close proximity to Arizona State University.

“While the Tempe area is a new market for us, we find that it shares many of the same appealing qualities as Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood,” Healey says. “They both offer a 24-7 lifestyle that is increasingly in demand today, with direct access to homes, jobs, restaurants, shopping and public transit options.”

The building, which has never been occupied, features 30,000-square-foot floor plates and includes ground floor retail space surrounding the main lobby and a newly constructed parking structure with 1,035 spaces. It was designed and constructed as an environmentally-friendly development and is certified under the Green Globes rating program, an assessment and rating tool operated by the Green Building Initiative to evaluate and rate the energy and environmental design of buildings.

“Given our leasing skills and experience here in Seattle, we felt that risk played to our strengths,” Healey says. “We felt confident we could lease up the building in a short amount of time.” She adds that CBRE’s local office will handle Tempe Gateway’s leasing and property management.

“The market is tough, but we’ve had some good activity on the building,” Healey says, adding that the firm is working on a couple of transactions that “show promise.”