MILL CREEK, Wash., Sept. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
Prometheus Real Estate Group, Inc. has purchased Surrey Park apartments in Mill Creek, WA in a $5.1 million transaction. The acquisition was purchased all cash. Located at the corner of 156th Street SE and Mill Creek Boulevard, the 46 unit community is an excellent mix of well-designed one and two bedroom floorplans. Built in 1991, the property is well maintained with limited deferred maintenance. The business plan is to reposition the asset through an aesthetic renovation that will reposition the property to compete with larger institutional sized properties in the immediate neighborhood. The property is walking distance from the popular Mill Creek Town Center and 3 miles northeast of the Interstate 5 Interstate 405 interchange, providing for access to job centers along both sides of Lake Washington. Mill Creek is 16 miles north of Bellevue and 20 miles north of Seattle. Nearby employment centers are the biotech firms and the planned Google campus 3 miles south in Bothell and Boeing’s Everett campus five miles northwest. The brokers on the transaction were Philip Assouad and Giovanni Napoli of Kidder Mathews. This acquisition brings Prometheus’ Pacific Northwest portfolio to 18 properties totaling 4,277 units.

About Prometheus

Since its inception in 1965, Prometheus Real Estate Group has specialized in the development and management of high quality residential properties throughout the Western United States. Today, they are the largest private owner of multi-family properties in the San Francisco Bay area with a growing portfolio which includes over 18,000 class A apartments in Seattle, Portland, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Recognition includes over 75 awards since the firm’s inception including 2010 MHN Best Property Management Company of the Year.

For more information visit:
http://prometheusreg.com , Facebook/PrometheusAptsTwitter/PrometheusAptsLinkedIn/Companies/Prometheus-Real-Estate-Group

SOURCE Prometheus Real Estate Group, Inc.

Copyright (C) 2011 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Article source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/prometheus-real-estate-group-adds-another-asset-to-seattle-portfolio-2011-09-12

San Francisco’s effort to transform an abandoned rail yard on its eastern shore in Mission Bay into an urban center is poised for a serious boost from plans by Salesforce.com Inc. to build a sprawling corporate campus in the area.

Urban-planning experts say the arrival of Salesforce will provide a vital stimulus for a once-neglected part of the city. But the bold design for the campus is just beginning a monthslong approval process, and Chief Executive Marc Benioff is leaving open the possibility that the company could simply pick a different location for its new headquarters. Some civic groups and architects, meanwhile, lament that the corporate-driven development isn’t creating the same neighborhood feel as other sections of the city.

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Salesforce.com

A rendering of the proposed Salesforce.com campus shows plans for a Jumbotron screen overlooking a plaza.

The Mission Bay redevelopment zone was established in 1998, anchored by a new campus of the University of California, San Francisco. City officials, who envisioned Mission Bay as a center for health care and medical research, say 35 biotech firms now are based in the area and take up more than one million square feet of office space. Salesforce.com, a business software maker now based in the city’s Financial District and South of Market Street, is proposing eight buildings containing roughly two million square feet. Mission Bay also is designed to include 6,000 housing units, half of which have been built so far.

Mission Bay “is the most important thing for San Francisco’s economy in the past 30 years, if not longer,” said Michael Teitz, an emeritus professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. “The city was headed in a direction that was basically tourism, and some software development during the dot-com boom, but it didn’t have what I’d regard as a solid, modern sector in the economy—and I think Mission Bay does that.”

Yet critics say the large buildings and plazas planned for the Salesforce campus won’t improve what they perceive as an unwelcoming atmosphere in Mission Bay.

“Unfortunately, that part of the city is still a bit of a wasteland, and the project doesn’t do much to change that,” said Eric Corey Freed, the founder of organicARCHITECT in San Francisco. Mission Bay, he said, offered the chance to build a new and vibrant neighborhood. Instead, he said, the area is “a place that feels cold, out of scale and out of touch with humanity.”

Mission Bay is a public-private partnership. Private firm FOCIL-MB LLC uses a developer partner to build the infrastructure, and is reimbursed as the redevelopment agency issues bonds backed by increases in property-tax revenue and fees within the redevelopment zone. The agency has issued $320 million in bonds for Mission Bay, while the area’s infrastructure is ultimately expected to cost about $700 million, said Kelley Kahn, the project manager for the redevelopment area. She added that the project is in year 13 of a 25-year buildout.

Only three of the area’s more than 70 lots have yet to be sold by FOCIL-MB, Ms. Kahn said. Much of the land still unoccupied is expected to be filled by Salesforce.com, which purchased 14 acres for $278 million, and an adjacent UCSF hospital complex expected to open in 2014. Salesforce.com didn’t receive any tax breaks for the campus.

Renderings of the Salesforce.com campus, released earlier this month, feature a flashy design. A public square is anchored by a hot-pink Jumbotron video screen.

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Brian L. Frank for The Wall Street Journal

A portion of the area in Mission Bay where the Salesforce.com headquarters would be built.

“That was my idea,” Mr. Benioff, the Salesforce.com CEO, said of the screen. “Putting something like that there can add a lot of energy.” The Jumbotron could be used for things such as employee presentations and public entertainment, he said.

Salesforce.com is hoping for design-review approval from the city by September. “If we can’t get the approvals we could also end up somewhere else,” Mr. Benioff said.

The redevelopment agency’s Ms. Kahn said that while she didn’t anticipate problems with the design review, the pink Jumbotron might face additional environmental scrutiny. Overall, Ms. Kahn said, “we’re generally, based on what we’ve seen, pleased.”

Mr. Benioff argued that a dramatic influx of color in Mission Bay would liven an area that until now has had an “office park” feel.

Mr. Benioff said he first became intrigued by the Mission Bay property when visiting the site of the UCSF children’s hospital he is helping fund with a $100 million gift.

Mission Bay has been the focus of disputes over how to best develop it dating to the 1980s. While the area is physically close to downtown, its location on the opposite side of Mission Creek and Interstate 280 can make it feel remote.

The project’s housing also has generated complaints. A lawsuit originally filed in 2006 by occupants of the Beacon, a nearly 600-unit condo development, alleges flawed construction and insufficient disclosures about soil contamination beneath the building. An attorney representing the real-estate company that sold the condos says buyers were informed of the soil issues prior to the sales, and that the contamination doesn’t pose a danger to residents. The case has been moved to arbitration, said Patrick Catalano, an attorney representing the plaintiffs.

Salesforce.com, which has about 2,750 employees in the Bay Area, expects to house between 8,000 and 9,000 at the new headquarters, designed by Mexico City-based architects Legorreta + Legorreta. The company said it doesn’t yet have an estimate for the construction cost or move-in date.

Write to John Letzing at john.letzing@dowjones.com

Article source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070104576397610335534024.html