The Eight’s Design Evolves from Stakeholder Feedback

BELLEVUE, WA—Skanska purchased the land at the intersection of NE 8th St. and 108th Ave. NE for The Eight in July 2018. And now, the team is finalizing the design for final administrative design review and approval, securing the necessary permits and entitlements, and then shift focus to construction in the next couple of months.

The 25-floor class-A office tower encompasses 540,000 square feet and is designed with large structural braces to accommodate a side core construction. This allows for large flexible floorplates for all types of tenants and densities.

The Eight also features seven alternating indoor/outdoor exterior balconies. The development has 7,000 square feet of open public space, 12,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and an additional 1,200-square-foot retail pavilion.

“Our team has spent a considerable amount of time listening to what is desired most from our stakeholders, and we are really excited about how the design is dynamically evolving to serve our tenants, the community and the city of Bellevue,” said Murphy McCullough, executive vice president and regional manager of Skanska USA Commercial Development in Seattle. “The Eight is designed to encourage a richer, inclusive experience for companies, the public and for the Eastside community at large.”

The Eight’s ground-floor level features a 6,000-square-foot open living room space, health-conscious HVAC system, touchless building controls, and ample storefront operability to promote health and wellness within the building.

Tenant amenities at The Eight include a dedicated floor for tenant event spaces, a health and wellness center that opens onto an outdoor patio and an outdoor deck that offers tenants a place to retreat. Amenities also include bicycle commuter facilities, and electric car and bike charging.

While no tenants have been signed as of yet, the building is designed to be among the most flexible towers in the market so it can accommodate either multiple tenants or a single large tenant, GlobeSt.com learns.

“A few things we continue to hear from the prospective tenant market in terms of desires are tenants want a great ground plane that delivers a third place for tenants and the community. In The Eight, the large living room serves as that blend between the gathering space and retail,” Charlie Foushee, vice president of development for Skanska USA Commercial Development in Seattle, tells GlobeSt.com. “Tenants want diversity in a building’s offerings. They want places to gather, places to meet, places to meet one-on-one, places to have a drink, eat, work out, and places to be outside. The Eight offers all of those things and was designed with all of that in mind. Tenants want flexibility. To be clear, they wanted flexibility before COVID, and flexibility is now even more important. The Eight’s floorplate offers ultimate flexibility because a side core allows less encumbered space than with a traditional core. There are no columns, higher ceilings than other developers are offering and extensive window lines that allow the maximum amount of daylight as well.”

The Eight is located near major Bellevue employers in the downtown core including Microsoft’s campus, Amazon, Salesforce, Paccar, Symetra and Concur. The location is a short walk from the new light rail station opening in 2023 as well as the Bellevue transit center. The site is within walking distance from The Bellevue Collection, downtown hotels, local restaurants and entertainment venues. It has direct freeway access to Interstate 405.

The Eight is Skanska’s sixth development project in the Puget Sound region and second project in Bellevue since it began development operations in 2011.

There are some key factors that position the Puget Sound office market to fare better than most in the wake of COVID-19, including the temporary nature of local office job losses and the resiliency of the specific industries that occupy office space in the region, according to a recent report by CBRE.

Industries deemed stable amid the pandemic (mature tech, life sciences, government) occupy 41.2 million square feet of office space across the Puget Sound region, almost 40% of total office inventory.

In contrast, less-resilient industries (aerospace, retail, co-working, tech start-ups) account for only 16.5 million square feet or just under 15% of office space. Mature tech firms have the largest share of occupancy and have thus far outperformed the market in the wake of COVID-19, accounting for more than one-third of tenant demand, half of lease volume and less than 4% of layoffs since March 12, says the report.