A Texas firm secured approval to build a two-tower office project in downtown Bellevue, Washington, a fast-growing city east of Seattle that's running out of large blocks of high-quality office space.
Bellevue officials approved the design and development plans for a project called Kanon with twin 15-story towers to be built across several parcels at 330 NE 12th Ave. on top of a shared podium with nearly 20,000 square feet of shopping and restaurant space.
The project, with a total of 640,000 square feet of offices planned by Dallas-based Beam Reach, comes as tech firms and other tenants grapple with office space shortage.
Steady demand for offices from Amazon, ChatGPT parent OpenAI and other firms has sparked a rebound in demand for space in the area over the past year.
No new office developments are scheduled to be finished in Seattle’s Eastside suburbs of Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland and Bothell this year — the first time since 2014 that no projects have been finished during a single calendar year in the region, according to the Broderick Group, a Bellevue-based real estate brokerage.
With no new projects under construction and few leases set to expire through 2027, downtown Bellevue's office vacancy rate may have peaked at just under 22%, according to Broderick's report.
OpenAI in January signed a deal to expand to about 272,000 square feet vacated by Microsoft at City Center Plaza, removing one of the few large blocks of space from downtown Bellevue, according to CoStar analytics.
Beam Reach expects to break ground on the first tower in the project designed by Gensler this fall and open the building in early 2029, according to the development application filed with the city.
The project would start with the demolition of a two-story office building at 330 112th Ave. NE owned by Bellevue-based Wallace Properties, according to city documents.
The Kanon project would include 5,668 square feet of retail,13,964 square feet of restaurants and a parking garage with 960 slots in the podium linking the two buildings, according to the plans.
The development firm did not immediately respond to inquiries from CoStar News about the project's scope or construction timeline.