Vulcan Real Estate's Bellevue Towers: Leasing Strategy Amid Market Shifts

Emily Kelly
Partner, Real Estate

Emily Kelly, Partner in the Real Estate group at Stoel Rives LLP, reflects on her five-year involvement in Vulcan’s transformative Four Towers development in downtown Bellevue. From negotiating Amazon’s office lease in the 555 Tower, now the city’s tallest high-rise, just before the pandemic, to navigating unprecedented challenges in an evolving market, Kelly offers firsthand insight into the complexities of high-stakes commercial leasing.

Transcript

Another project that has been incredibly meaningful to me and really satisfying to see come through development over the past five years is Vulcan's development of Four Towers in downtown Bellevue. So the 555 Tower is now the tallest high rise in Bellevue, and I can see it from our office looking across Lake Washington. We helped them lease the building to Amazon, all of the office space, right before the pandemic hit. It was before development started and there were a lot of really challenging provisions to work through, especially not knowing that we were about to enter a very unprecedented time in our history. It has been really satisfying to see those come to fruition.

I have also really enjoyed recently, as Vulcan's buildings in Bellevue have been occupied by the office user, we are now working with them to fill in the retail space on the ground level. We've been busy working with them on retail leasing and getting really interesting, fun retailers that are activating the space, making it a better product for the office users and helping them face challenges, certainly with retailers, especially with escalating construction costs, but we have had some really great successes of retailers that have gotten through that process and are now open for business.