“This project has been long in the making, and is another project in the long list coming to downtown Bellevue. This and other projects will very much change the face of downtown Bellevue…!”
Hines has applied to develop a large mixed-use project called Main Street Place on almost a full block at the southern edge of downtown Bellevue, according to a public record.
The 1.4 million-square-foot development is planned for where Office Depot operates. Toys R Us used to operate on the block, which is bordered by Main and Second streets and 108th and 110th avenues Northeast.
This is the latest big development planned for Bellevue, where Amazon said it will locate 25,000 jobs in the coming years. The project site is a block south of the new Summit III office tower, which Hines built and leased to Amazon before selling the Summit campus for $756 million in the region’s largest deal of 2019.
Four office towers, ranging from seven to 15 stories, are planned on the north side of the project, and two apartment buildings of five to eight stories will rise on the south portion, according to information submitted to the city.
Public records list the site owner as Benenson Capital Partners, a 115-year-old, family-owned company based in New York City. The cover page of the information packet lists Benenson as Hines’ project partner.
“This is not anything we can comment on at this time,” a Hines spokesperson said in an email to the Business Journal on Wednesday. “We look forward to sharing more soon.”
The project will have 1 million square feet of commercial space, including 952,000 square feet of offices, according to the application. Four levels of below-grade parking are planned. Sound Transit’s East Main light rail station is half a block away and scheduled to open in June 2023.
Main Street Place will be “a new Town Square” for Bellevue, according to the materials submitted to the city. There will be through-block pedestrian connections and plazas.
Seattle-based architecture and planning company GGLO and New York City-based architecture firm KPF are listed in the packet. Among KPF’s projects are New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Sixty London, which houses Amazon, according to the KPF website.
By Marc Stiles – Staff Writer, Puget Sound Business Journal
Oct 28, 2020, 12:20 pm PDT