The October 2017 breakfast focused on the development of Fremont, one of Seattle's up-and-coming commercial hubs, and the great strides already made in the sustainability of this neighborhood.

President Kristin Jensen opened the meeting by thanking our sponsors, Rushing, Baylis Architects, Venture GC, and Vulcan Real Estate. Kristin reported that we currently have 924 members and are the fourth-largest NAIOP chapter. Kristin also reported that the Community Enhancement Project at Farmer Frog was a success. Good work everyone!

Night of the Stars 2017 Winners Include Weyerhaeuser Headquarters, UW’s Global Innovation Exchange, Expedia’s 645 Elliot and the Marion West

Inaugural People’s Choice Award voted by the CRE community goes to Atlas Workbase

Douglas Howe is honored as 2017 Hall of Fame inductee in recognition of his contributions to the built environment of Seattle and the Puget Sound 

Visit the Night of the Stars 2017 gallery.

SEATTLE – Announced on Friday, November 3, at the annual gala, NAIOP Washington State’s 2017 Night of the Stars Awards highlight the Northwest’s highly competitive development environment. Seattle tops national crane counts and available land is scarce; tenants require sustainability, from salmon-safe buildings to indoor forests, and the community requires accommodations for increased housing and growing industry. The winners represent how the development community continues to find creative, sustainable solutions to fit the needs of the growing and maturing Puget Sound market.

Each year, NAIOP’s Night of the Stars identifies outstanding real estate developments and activities in a variety of market types and the individuals who conceived of, took risks, sponsored, supported and made the projects happen. The awards aim to honor entire teams, including all who contributed to the project’s success in this annual celebration of the industry. Projects are evaluated for impact on the community, market adaptability, ingenuity and local contributions. All nominations and winners are viewable via the new NAIOP WA app, which is designed to transform how the Northwest commercial real estate community networks.

In addition to nominated projects, each year, an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the industry is selected for induction into the NAIOP Washington State Hall of Fame. This year, Douglas Howe joins the ranks of the vaunted for his contributions to Seattle and the Northwest’s built environment, as well as to the NAIOP organization. As founder and Chief Executive Officer of Touchstone, Douglas built a reputation developing commercial office, biotechnology R & D, retail and hotel properties that make a positive impact on the built environment—whether restoring historical landmark structures or constructing award winning, architecturally distinctive new buildings. Currently, Douglas is Governor of the NAIOP Research Foundation; he served as Chairman of NAIOP in 2009 and as President of NAIOP Washington State in 2004. Read more about Douglas Howe.

Visit the Night of the Stars 2017 gallery.

Lanzi Li is Associate Project Manager with Heartland, a small, Seattle-based commercial real estate advisory firm that has been around for 30 years. Heartland’s portfolio of advisory projects encompasses the full range of economic sectors, real estate product types, geographies and client types. Despite the variety of contexts, we are advisors first and work with our clients from strategy development to analytics and on through implementation.

As NAIOP WA's 900th member, Lanzi received this opportunity to be featured on the NAIOP WA blog and in our newsletter, as well as a season pass to our 2018 breakfast meetings. Who will be our 1,000th member? Join today for your chance to be featured and receive a special event registration bonus.

SEATTLE – In a reflection of Seattle and the Puget Sound region’s strong commercial real estate activity, NAIOP Washington State recently became the fourth-largest chapter of NAIOP, the commercial real estate association.

NAIOP Washington State is committed to members’ professional success and to an overall, long-term positive environment for business and development in the region.

Welcome and congratulations to our September 2017 new members!

NAIOP’s September 20 breakfast meeting convened in Southcenter near the epicenter of King County’s industrial area. This meeting on Innovation in Industrial Real Estate was sponsored by Centerpoint and Rushing. We sincerely thank them for their support.

President Kristin Jensen opened the meeting; our annual business meeting included election of our 2018 officers and ratification of the actions of the 2017 board.

Be humble and always be flexible.

Anyone who knows Douglas Howe knows that his charismatic personality, dedication to his craft and keen business sense have made his success what it is today. His passion to develop buildings that make a positive impact on the built environment, his humility and the ardent viewpoint that he’s a student of his field even after forty years are also hallmarks of his tenure—one that’s made a significant difference to the Seattle urban core and the Puget Sound region.

NAIOP Washington State will honor and induct Douglas Howe, founder and former CEO of Touchstone, into its Hall of Fame at the 2017 Night of the Stars awards. The Hall of Fame was created to recognize the people who laid the groundwork for the industry today and have helped shape the character of the region and the great cities in Washington. Under Douglas’ leadership, Touchstone has broken ground on 12 projects comprising nearly three million square feet and is currently developing two million square feet of real estate.

NAIOP WA Announces New App Featuring CRE’s Industry Best with 2017 Night of the Stars Finalists & Hall of Fame Inductee Douglas Howe

New for 2017: People’s Choice Award with Daily Voting Online | Douglas Howe to be honored as 2017 Hall of Fame inductee in recognition of his contributions to the built environment of Seattle and the Puget Sound and to NAIOP

Maria Elena Poyer is an Assistant Vice President and Portfolio Management Officer with Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Commercial Real Estate Banking division, where she's worked for three years. Maria recently moved to Seattle and joined NAIOP Washington State to build her professional network. She's also been featured on popular TV shows playing a well-known but unusual instrument. Read on to learn more about Maria, and be sure to connect with her on LinkedIn and introduce yourself at an upcoming event!  

What do you like best about your industry? 
Tangible results. It’s rare in the finance industry to be able to see or touch the results of your work. In commercial real estate, you get the opportunity to help clients build projects that could one day even be iconic, which excites me.

Our June Breakfast Meeting, It’s All About the Experience, explored the design drivers for residential, retail and commercial. The breakfast was sponsored by Juniper Capital, Rushing and Graphite Design. We sincerely thank them for their support.

President Kristin Jensen related information about a NAIOP Washington State PAC fundraiser on June 28. She also spoke about the real estate excise tax potential increase. We had a new member update and heard about the Property Tour that will take place in Bellevue on July 20.

The 2017 session of the Washington State Legislature is now in its second 30-day special session in order to find agreement on the level and sources of funding for the McCleary decision to fully fund K-12 education. The legislature is expected to reach agreement by the end of the special session on June 21, or by June 30, the final day of the current biennium.

The Washington Supreme Court ruled in McCleary that school districts’ reliance on local levies, and the ability of local communities to pay for those levies, varied dramatically around the state and resulted in inequitable funding of K-12 education. The legislature’s challenge has been to equitably fund education statewide.

This was a tough one! We have participated in and to a large extent driven the tremendous real estate expansion in Seattle and that’s a good thing! However, there can be unintended consequences and in our May Breakfast we explored one of those consequences: Homelessness. The Breakfast was sponsored by Lake Union Partners, Runberg Architecture Group, and Rushing. We sincerely thank them for their continued support.

President Kristin Jensen related information about the annual NAIOP Washington State PAC fundraiser on June 28. She also welcomed our new members. We heard about the Summer Social on August 14 at The Golf Club at Newcastle and received a presentation on the 2017 Real Estate Challenge, which was held in British Columbia.

Richard Kendall, General Manager, Allison+Partners moderated our panel which included:

In a very highly attended event, the annual Broker’s Forecast was presented to our Breakfast attendees on April 26. The breakfast was sponsored by Rushing, LBA Realty, O’Keefe Development and Sellen Construction - we sincerely thank them for their continued support. President Kristin Jensen began the meeting and gave the assembly an update on new members and introduced Kris Beason who gave some background on Sellen. John Swanson from Umpqua Bank also made a short presentation. We heard about the Community Enhancement Project which will be on September 30 at Farmer Frog in Woodinville.

Rob Swartz, Senior VP of Kilroy Realty, moderated our panel and introduced our esteemed panelists:

On Wednesday, March 15, breakfast meeting attendees were treated to a lively discussion of the Seattle residential real estate market. The breakfast was sponsored by Moss Adams and Pyatt/Broadmark Management - we sincerely thank them for their continued support. President Kristin Jensen gave the assembly an update on the latest economic impact numbers from the commercial real estate industry in Washington State and across the country, and we also met new members. Additionally, we heard an update on the national board of directors from our local liaisons to that board.

Report: Commercial Real Estate in Washington State Supported 43,130 Jobs and $6.3 Billion of GDP in 2016

SEATTLE – In late February, the NAIOP Research Foundation released the NAIOP Economic Impacts of Commercial Real Estate report (2017 Edition). The report is conducted for purposes of estimating the annual economic contribution of commercial real estate development to the U.S. economy. 

National highlights from the 2017 report include:

• Commercial real estate development supported 6.3* million American jobs in 2016 (a measure of both new and existing jobs).
• Commercial real estate development contributed $465 billion to the GDP* in 2016.
• There were 410.1 million square feet of commercial real estate space built in 2016, with capacity to house 1.1 million new workers.

Locally, 2016 economic impacts in Washington State included: 

On Wednesday, February 15, attendees of the monthly Breakfast meeting were treated to the annual Capital Markets Forecast, sponsored by JLL, Andersen Construction, and Umpqua Bank. We sincerely thank our sponsors for their continued support.

This is why NAIOP works.

This morning in Washington, D.C., NAIOP Corporate named Washington State the 2017 Chapter of the Year, recognizing the overall strength of our local organization. The annual merit awards program evaluates chapter education, government affairs involvement, member recruitment and retention, communications, and chapter management. 

Earlier this week, Christie Baumel, Climate & Energy Advisor in Seattle's Office of Sustainability & Environment, announced that OSE Director’s Rule 2016-01 implementing the Seattle Building Tune-Ups requirement has been finalized. NAIOP Washington State's members were able to learn about and directly contribute to the development of this rule via a Sustainable Development Roundtable event in late 2015. 

Christie Baumel's announcement:

Happy New Year! The attendees for the January Breakfast Meeting were treated to travel across the Pacific courtesy of the Runstad Fellows with a program entitled Lessons from Auckland.

Outgoing President John Teutsch opened the meeting with thanks to JPC Architects for sponsoring the breakfast. We sincerely appreciate their support. And we sincerely thank John for his leadership.