Among the biggest winners of the decision to site the Global Innovation Exchange, or GIX, in Bellevue are two Seattle firms: Wright Runstad & Co., and Security Properties.
Wright Runstad, in conjunction with Shorenstein Properties of San Francisco, is developing the 36-acre Spring District, a mixed-use development that will be GIX's permanent home. Security Properties is developing a 309-unit apartment project in the district east of Interstate 405 in the Bel-Red corridor, and now plans to start building the second phase with more than 275 units in the summer of 2016, Security President Tim Overland said Thursday.
Initially, GIX will be housed in roughly 100,000 square feet in one office tower, according to Wright Runstad President Greg Johnson, who expects the international tech training institute to expand over time. He added the first building will be done within 18 to 24 months, allowing GIX to open in the Spring District in 2017.
The decision to put GIX in the $2.3 billion Spring District is a godsend for the project with an audacious goal: turn an industrial area into a walkable, urban neighborhood of office towers, residential buildings, parks and a light-rail stop. Wright Runstad aspires to make its project to Portland's Pearl District, formerly a warehouse district that's now an urban oasis of housing and commercial buildings.
Construction of The Spring District's streets and other infrastructure began last year, and Security Properties started building the first phase of the apartments earlier this month.
Now the district has its first big technology tenant: GIX, a Microsoft (Nasdaq: MFST)-supported project that the University of Washington is jointly establishing with Tsinghua University of China. Within a decade, the project partners expect that more than 3,000 students will be studying at GIX.
"I clearly do think that GIX will help be a launching pad for all this new development," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said Thursday.
Having a stop along the future light-rail line that will run from near Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond to Seattle was important in the siting decision, Smith added. In Seattle, riders will be able to transfer to trains that will run to the UW. The Seattle-to-Redmond line is scheduled to open in 2023, and next year a station on the UW's campus will open.
Connecting the UW with GIX will be "hugely helpful," Smith said, adding the GIX team needed a place with ample land. Ten years ago, the campus likely would have been built in Seattle's South Lake Union, but today there's no parcel large enough.
"I think one of the things that’s not yet completely appreciated in our region is just what a unique opportunity the Bel-Red corridor offers," Smith said. "Here is an area of land that’s larger than Central Park in New York that has been completely rezoned for development. Yet it is also land that is connected to technology corridors and is part of a thriving metropolitan area."
He said it became clear "fairly quickly that the Bel-Red corridor was the Bel-Red corridor was a good place to look.”
He added that GIX chose the Spring District due to "the sterling reputation of Wright Runstad," which has close ties to the UW and Microsoft. The UW's real estate school is named for Wright Runstad co-founder and CEO Jon Runstad and his wife Judy Runstad, an attorney, and Wright Runstad developed Microsoft's headquarters.
