A Hong Kong-based private equity firm acquired a sprawling office park in Bellevue, Washington, extending a surge in big-money office investment activity across Seattle’s Eastside in recent weeks.
Gaw Capital acquired the 15-building, nearly 560,000-square-foot Bellefield Office Park, south of downtown Bellevue, from Houston-based Lionstone Investments. The deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure deal closed in the last week of June, according to brokerage Broderick Group's second-quarter market report.
The transaction is among the year's largest office deals ranked by total square footage in the Seattle area, according to CoStar data. Lionstone and local Talon Private Capital bought the office park for $120.3 million in 2014, which was built mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, CoStar data shows.
The deed-in-lieu documents show an assessed valuation of roughly $130 million for the portfolio.
The deal is the latest in a flurry of transactions in June by some of the world’s biggest real estate firms, with the area east of Seattle, across Lake Washington, logging at least $465 million in office sales volume in the second quarter, according to CoStar data. That's among the highest sales volume seen in Bellevue and other Eastside cities since the pandemic.
Sales volume nationally has plummeted by more than 55% over the past year to $35 billion, according to CoStar data, a nearly 15-year low. Yet, on a quarterly basis, sales have ticked up in the early months of 2025 as discounts have pushed an expanding group of investors to take advantage of more deals.
Growing sentiment
Bank of America provided a $110 million loan to Lionstone and Talon to refinance Bellefield in 2019, public records show. Gaw Capital assumed the loan as part of the deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure — an arrangement where an owner avoids foreclosure by giving up a property in exchange for the lender releasing them from the loan.
Gaw had over $34 billion in global real and other assets as of the end of 2024, including the 76-story, 1.6-million-square-foot Columbia Center in downtown Seattle, the tallest building in the Pacific Northwest.
The latest acquisition joined other notable deals in June. Blackstone and KKR finished deals with developer Shorenstein Properties last month for several skyscrapers in Bellevue’s 2-million-square-foot Spring District campus, which houses Meta, the AI company Snowflake, and others.
The surge in Eastside office deals last month pointed to "growing signs of buyer engagement, particularly for stabilized, well-leased assets,” according to the Broderick report. Bellefield is more than 80% occupied by a number of financial, technology, government and other tenants, including grocery chain Metropolitan Market's business offices, Primrose School and King County Superior Court.
The business park “attracted a wide range of prospective investors, drawn by the scale, location and unique appeal” of the campus, the Broderick report said.
“Investor sentiment continues to be shaped by elevated interest rates and caution around vacancy risk, but quality product in prime locations is drawing interest from both institutional and private capital,” according to the report.