SEATTLE | Amazon development (3 towers) | FT | FLOORS

[NYguy]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...tml?prmid=4939

Amazon to buy Denny Triangle property; plans 3 big office towers
In one of Seattle's biggest real-estate deals in years, Amazon.com has agreed to buy three blocks
from Clise Properties and plans to build a 1 million-square-foot office tower on each.





By Eric Pryne
Feb 15, 2012

In one of Seattle's biggest real-estate deals in years, fast-growing Amazon.com has agreed to buy three blocks in Seattle's Denny Triangle — and preliminary paperwork has been filed with the city to build a 1 million-square-foot office tower on each of them. The three contiguous blocks Amazon is buying are bounded roughly by Westlake Avenue, Sixth Avenue and Blanchard Street. Most of the property is parking lots; but other users include the King Cat Theater, Toyota of Seattle and the Sixth Avenue Inn motel.

Seneca Group, a Seattle real-estate advisory firm working with Clise and Amazon, filed papers with Seattle's Department of Planning and Development on Wednesday for "development of an approximately 1 million-square-foot office building with accessory parking" on each of the three blocks. "This would be world-class," Clise said of the development. "It jibes with what our vision has always been."

If built, the three buildings would contain nearly twice as much office space as the Columbia Center, Seattle's tallest building. They also would more than double Amazon's already substantial footprint on downtown's northern edge. Zoning approved in 2006 allows towers as tall as 500 feet on the blocks. The parcels make up a big chunk of a 13-acre collection of Denny Triangle properties that Clise put up for sale in 2007, attracting international attention. The family, which began accumulating the parcels in the 1920s, said it envisioned a master-planned community on the scale of New York's Rockefeller Center.

Bryan Stevens, a spokesman for the city's Department of Planning and Development, said the paperwork for the office towers filed Wednesday includes no details — just the property addresses and one-line descriptions of the proposals. A "pre-submittal conference" with planners is Feb. 23, he said, and the applicant may provide more details then.