Stalled Bellevue tower site won't be eyesore

Developer Bentall Capital is halting work on Summit III, a 15-story office building in downtown Bellevue, and says construction may not resume for two or three years.

But the developer vows the site won't become another unsightly hole in the ground. It might even be attractive.

Between now and mid-September, Bentall plans to finish all the tower's street-level surroundings according to plan — sidewalks, street trees, a plaza, fountains, flagpoles, benches, a sculpture.

Only the footprint of the tower itself will be fenced off, said Gary Carpenter, executive vice president, and that fence won't be chain-link but an architect-designed, 10-foot wall.

Why do all this? "We stared at a hole across the street for 3 ½ years," Carpenter said, "and we didn't like it."

That hole was the stalled Bellevue Technology Tower, a victim of the dot-com bust. Developer Eugene Horbach lost the property to foreclosure in 2002 and it remained a crater for years. Bentall owns several buildings nearby.

The Texas international real-estate firm Hines resumed work in 2006 on a redesigned 20-story building on the Technology Tower site. Now known as the Expedia Tower, it was completed last year.

The hole at Summit III — work on the aboveground part of the project hasn't begun — will be capped with a concrete deck.

The city has given Bentall permission to rent the 600 spaces in the project's nearly finished seven-level underground parking garage to shoppers and commuters during the construction hiatus.

The interim plan for the site was negotiated with city officials, "but, basically, it was their idea," said Ken Thiem, senior planner in Bellevue's Development Services Department.

Bentall didn't want to leave an eyesore, he said, "and we're avoiding that, I think."

The developer began building 330,000-square-foot Summit III in early 2008.

It had no commitments from tenants then, but Microsoft, Expedia and others had leased most of the downtown Bellevue office space then under construction.

And the vacancy rate, as measured by brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, was less than 6 percent.

Since then the economy has tanked. The downtown Bellevue vacancy rate has more than doubled. And Bentall still hasn't found any tenants.

In May, Carpenter said work on Summit III had slowed because there was no reason to rush. He also said construction could stop entirely.

That's what the Canadian pension fund financing the building decided to do recently, Carpenter said.

The decision reflects the continued deterioration of the market, he added.

Bentall must apply for another city permit to finish the tower.

It plans to get one so construction can resume whenever it signs one or more big tenants, Carpenter said.

When that happens, he said, the building could be finished in 13 months.

Material from Seattle Times archives was used in this story.

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com