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Puget Sound Energy is planning a major presence – including a corporate office building and a warehouse – in Des Moines Creek Business Park at the south end of Sea-Tac International Airport.
Des Moines Mayor Dave Kaplan, speaking to the Southwest King County Chamber of Commerce during the annual mayor’s luncheon last month, said the Port of Seattle was expected to announce soon that a major tenant would locate there.
The Port owns the 89-acre – and as yet undeveloped – business park, which is inside the Des Moines city limits, and operates the airport.
Kaplan did not identify this “major tenant,” but the Daily Journal of Commerce (DJC) reported in its May 4 issue that it is Puget Sound Energy (PSE).
In that story, based on documents obtained from the City of Des Moines through a public disclosure request, the DJC identifies the Benaroya Co. as developer.
Lawhead Architects of Bellevue as project designer and Barghausen Consulting Engineers of Kent is a member of the design team.
“We’re very pleased to have Puget Sound Energy locate in Des Moines,” Mayor Kaplan told The Waterland Blog on May 9.
“I think that it helps break the ice on development of the rest of Des Moines Business Park,” Kaplan added.
Earlier Wednesday, Port of Seattle aviation division spokesman Perry Cooper said Port officials won’t comment on the identity of this tenant or the development plans “until every I is dotted and every t crossed.”
Port commissioners are expected to finalize details at their “first or second meeting in June,” after which an announcement will be made, he said, with groundbreaking then anticipated in the near future.
“The city is very excited, the Port is very excited, the tenant is very excited,” Cooper said.
According to the DJC report, Benaroya plans to develop a 242,000-square-foot warehouse, a five-story, 125,000-square-foot office building, and a smaller building and storage yards for PSE.
The project site will occupy about 50 acres in the business park at S. 208th St. and 24th Ave. S. – with the development is listed at $44.2 million, the article said.
PSE will relocate some facilities there from SeaTac, Kent and Renton because of the central location of the business park in the Puget Sound region, it also noted.
Once a residential neighborhood in Des Moines, the Port purchased the area that is now designated for a business park in the 1990s as part of its noise-abatement program for the airport.
In 2008, a Southern California developer was picked by the Port to plan the business park, but those preliminary plans were scrapped and that developer withdrew in the wake of the economic downturn.
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