BELLEVUE, Wash. -- Developer Schnitzer West confirmed late Thursday is has put the retail portion of the Bravern building up for sale.
The 300,000 square foot shopping complex, opened in the fall of 2009, and includes high-end tenants like Neiman Marcus, Jimmy Choo, and Louis Vuitton. Observers have suggested it has struggled, with empty storefronts, and problems filling to adjacent residential towers.
“It has worked fine,” says Schnitzer Founder Dan Ivanoff declared Thursday, “But was a huge mixed use building a challenge? Yes, it was a challenge.”
Ivanoff says his company is selling the property simply because the timing is right, capital markets are growing, and this will help the company “reload”.
He says there have already been dozens of interested buyers.
But don’t count Kemper Freeman among them. The developer of Bellevue Square, Bellevue Place, and Lincoln Square, says he’s not interested.
“It’s taken me 67 years to do this,” he says, while looking at a map of his properties. “[They] were trying to do it overnight.” Kemper says he was approached last week to buy the property, but “That’s eight blocks away. I wish that it was two blocks away, that would help both of us. But there is no synergy between the two players.”
Schnitzer sold off the Bravern’s office towers in 2010, and has sold three other local buildings this year. It is not selling the two residential towers adjacent to the shopping complex.
Schnitzer West’s Senior Investment Director Tom Woodworth shrugs off a suggestion the sale is because the complex in underperforming, saying the retail component is 85% full. “The people who know, know it to be a success,” says Woodworth.
One of the Bravern’s anchor tenants, David Barton Gym, filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year.
A Neiman Marcus spokesperson acknowledged the retail giant was aware of the sale, but offered no further comment.
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