Damage to buildings assessed

Offices of at least three businesses in the Plaza 305 building in downtown Bellevue are closed indefinitely after Thursday's construction-crane accident.

Workers shuttled in and out of a Pacific Continental Bank branch, removing confidential documents because of severe damage to the building. Clients were told they could do their banking online, over the phone or at a branch in downtown Seattle.

At Civica Office Commons, windows were shattered in the offices of developer Schnitzer Northwest and public-relations firm Waggener Edstrom Worldwide when the crane slammed into the north tower of the complex. A Wells Fargo branch on the ground floor remained closed while workers removed debris.

The crane was working on Tower 333, a 20-story office building planned for Northeast Fourth Street and 108th Avenue Northeast. Construction has stopped, and it's not known when it will be able to start again.

The uncertainty could interrupt lease negotiations between the tower's developer and a major prospective tenant, reportedly Google.

Construction cranes are a common site in downtown Bellevue, where 2,200 apartment and condominium units are being built and where Tower 333 is one of four major office complexes set to rise in the next two years.

Tower 333

The Texas-based Hines development company had hoped to complete Tower 333 by the fourth quarter of 2007. In a statement Friday, Hines' vice president of communications, George Lancaster, said the developer had "no idea what impact the tragic accident will have on our schedule."

"As of now, I would hope we would get construction back on track at some point — but not before we are 100 percent assured that the contractor can proceed safely," Lancaster wrote in an e-mail.

Michael Brennan, Bellevue's deputy director of development services, said the Tower 333 project will be delayed for a while, though probably not for more than six months.

"They have to remove all the debris," Brennan said. "Then, they'll need to assess the damage and do repairs and get another crane in here — which these days, with all the construction, can be hard."

Commercial real-estate brokers in the Bellevue area had been expecting an announcement soon from Hines on a major tenant for the 410,000-square-foot tower.

Brokers said they heard Google had signed a letter of intent with Hines to occupy about 300,000 square feet, room for at least 1,200 workers. Lancaster said Hines policy forbids him from discussing lease negotiations.

Brokers said the delay could cause Google to reconsider.

"If it affects their ... schedule, then I'd think they would be talking to everybody, and we're certainly part of the 'everybody,' " said Dan Ivanoff, managing investment partner at Schnitzer Northwest, which is developing 745,000 square feet of office space at the Bravern in downtown Bellevue.

Ivanoff declined to confirm Google's interest in Tower 333, saying he "can't speak of that name you mentioned" because of a nondisclosure agreement.

Tower 333 is going up in the same spot where the late developer Eugene Horbach planned to build the Bellevue Technology Tower. Horbach lost the property in foreclosure 18 months before his 2004 death.

Plaza 305

Plaza 305 is unsafe to occupy, Brennan said. The 19,800-square-foot building housed Intelligent Results, a software company on the top floor, in addition to Pacific Continental Bank.

Tenants in the building, built in 1978, likely paid lower rents than at newer offices downtown. In newer buildings, the average annual rental rates run $30 a square foot or more, said Kip Spencer, co-founder of OfficeSpace.com and an executive at NuMark Office Interiors.

Businesses displaced from the building "will definitely be paying higher rates for similar space — assuming they can find it," Spencer said.

The office vacancy rate in Bellevue's central business district is a low 2.9 percent, Spencer said.

Civica Office Commons

Built in 2001, Civica is considered one of Bellevue's premier office complexes. With such well-regarded tenants as Microsoft and Morgan Stanley, Civica fetched $575 a square foot — a record price for the Seattle area — in a recent sale to New York investment firm Brickman Associates.

At least three of the north tower's eight floors had damage, such as shattered windows. The Bellevue Downtown Association told its members in an e-mail Friday that about 25 percent of the north tower had been cordoned off.

Colliers International, which manages Civica, would not discuss the extent of the damage to the building.

Annie Herbert, director of marketing at Bellevue-based Waggener Edstrom, said the public-relations firm has about 200 employees on the sixth and seventh floors.

A dozen employees were working when the crane fell, Herbert said, but none was hurt. The company hopes to reopen its Civica offices Monday.

Amy Martinez: 206-464-2923 or amartinez@seattletimes.com