Bridge Nabs 117 Acres for 1.9M Industrial Park

MILTON, WA—Third-party logistics and e-commerce continue to be the main drivers for warehouse and distribution deliveries. To that end, Bridge Development Partners recently acquired 117 acres for the future site of Bridge Point I-5 Seattle, a four-building 1.94 million-square-foot industrial park.

This is Bridge’s largest project in the Seattle region to date. The purchase price was undisclosed.

The site sits just three miles from the Port of Tacoma, the region’s largest and most active seaport, and allows for direct access to the port via Highway 99. Prior to Bridge’s acquisition, the private seller operated an onsite grading and mining business for almost 30 years.

Bridge will deliver Bridge Point I-5 Seattle in two phases. Phase I, consisting of the 1,021,791-square-foot cross-dock facility, will be delivered in first quarter 2023, while Phase II, encompassing the three single-load buildings totaling 921,270 square feet, will be delivered in 2024.

Mike Newton with Kidder Mathews represented Bridge in the transaction and will be retained as the leasing agent on the project, while Bob Naber with NAI Puget Sound Properties represented the seller.

“A project of this size in such close proximity to the Port of Tacoma, I-5 and the major population centers is a rarity in the Greater Seattle market. With the development of Bridge Point I-5 Seattle, we’ll be able to deliver a modern campus with the ability to accommodate large tenants, such as technology or manufacturing giants and e-commerce users, that have never before had the option of leasing state-of-the-art industrial space in this prime location,” said Justin Carlucci, partner for Bridge’s Northwest Region. “As Seattle continues to attract new residents and businesses, this campus represents a key piece of infrastructure to support booming supply chains and ensure the region’s economy can continue to grow.”

Of the 117 acres acquired, 89 acres will be used in the development of Bridge Point I-5 Seattle. The four planned class-A industrial buildings will vary in size ranging from 119,022 square feet up to more than 1 million square feet. The facilities will also feature 32- to 40-foot clear heights, ESFR sprinklers, LED lighting, 1,218 total parking spaces and 130- to 185-foot truck courts.

“This sale is indicative of the trend for sizeable larger footprint industrial buildings in close-in markets, the trend for higher clear heights and parking for industrial, and the trend for more industrial real estate in close proximity to the interstates and also the ports,” Carlucci tells GlobeSt.com.

Milton is set in a core industrial pocket of the Seattle region directly adjacent to Interstate 5. The site is also within a 35-minute drive of six of Washington’s 10 most populated cities. Additionally, tenants at Bridge Point I-5 Seattle will have access to the four-way interchanges of all major thoroughfares servicing the region: I-5, Highway 167, Highway 18 and Interstate 405, the latter of which serves cities east of Seattle where companies such as Costco, T-Mobile and Microsoft are headquartered.

The acquisition of Bridge Point I-5 Seattle comes one week after Bridge announced its acquisition of Bridge Point Kent 300, a two-building 309,028-square-foot industrial campus in Kent that is set to deliver in early 2022. Since first opening its Seattle office in 2018, Bridge has developed 2 million square feet of class-A industrial product throughout the Northwest region and acquired enough land to develop an additional 2.25 million square feet in the coming years.

Seattle’s industrial inventory increased in the third quarter of 2020, with more than 965,000 square feet added, according to Cushman & Wakefield. This market had 3 million square feet of inventory delivered as of third quarter. Of the 7.2 million square feet under construction, more than 5.6 million square feet (78%) was in the South Sound market with the remaining 1.6 million square feet (22%) under construction in the Kent Valley. On top of these deliveries and construction projects, 17.5 million square feet is in the pipeline, of which 12.8 million square feet (73%) in the rapidly growing South Sound where development land is less expensive and rental rates are lower than Seattle in-city and Kent Valley.