The Herald Business Journal


YOUR COUNTY.	YOUR BUSINESS JOURNAL.

Published July 2001

Lynnwood Corporate Center II:
A model for future development
'Smart' office center expected to attract high-tech tenants to south county area

By John Wolcott
Herald Business Journal Editor

The recently completed Lynnwood Corporate Center II is much more than a new office building in this primarily residential and retail community that is perhaps best known for its giant Alderwood Mall.

The four-story building symbolizes the start of what may become a revitalized downtown business district for Lynnwood. It is the first of a new breed of "smart" office centers in the city equipped for regional and global telecommunications, and it showcases the type of facility that is expected to be a magnet for attracting high-tech business tenants from King County and beyond.

Likewise, the building's first tenant — Seattle-based Sparling Inc., one of the nation's top-rated electrical engineering and technology consulting firms — is likely to become the poster company for the kind of new businesses the city and developers want to attract as new smart-wired office buildings change Lynnwood's skyline.

Sparling, noted for its work on such projects as Seattle's Experience Music Project and designing 4.5 million square feet of offices for Microsoft in Redmond, has opened its Lynnwood office as its first satellite office, though the company's telecommunications network so effectively links the two locations that they will operate essentially as a single office.

"Our downtown Seattle office couldn't accommodate the growth we anticipate in the next 10 years, this office can," said Jim Duncan, Chairman and CEO of Sparling. "Also, our lease was up for renewal and the rent was doubling. And this location is close to where most of our employees live, so we save them a lot of commute time and gain more productivity, too. Most of the employees who live in King County will continue to work in the Seattle office."

Those reasons are exactly what Ron Gregory had in mind when he began planning his Lynnwood office center.

"We had in mind a facility that would attract employers in King County who wanted to improve personal and corporate productivity by eliminating long commutes and making better use of high-tech communications. Also, they can reduce costs by moving to Snohomish County where rents are lower," said Gregory, Chairman and CEO of Olympic Capital Group of Lynnwood, the project's developer.

"When you look at the demographics of this area and what we've done here, I suggest that the commercial scene we envision for downtown Lynnwood is manifesting itself in this building and the buildings to come, and in tenants like Sparling," said Jim Granger, in charge of business development for Olympic and one of 10 members of the Project Oversight Committee involved in planning the future of Lynnwood's downtown core.

The 70,000-square-foot Lynnwood Corporate Center II, strategically located close to the intersection of I-5 and I-405, offers four floors and three 900-square-foot mezzanines with views of the Olympic and Cascade mountains, Mount Rainier and Mount Baker. The complex includes 226 parking spaces.

Equipped with Verizon's state-of-the-art fiber-optic telecommunications network, the building offers unparalleled flexibility for tenants' high-tech, broadband Internet and data transmission needs.

According to a national survey by the Building Owners and Managers Association, broadband access is the No. 1 requested service by building tenants, particularly in smaller and mid-sized properties. Benefits for property owners, according to BOMA, include more stable occupancy rates, greater property value and higher rents.

For tenants, an already installed high-tech telecommunication infrastructure makes them more competitive, efficient and productive, plus saves them from investing up to $50,000 to wire their offices themselves.

"What you're seeing here — in this building and in Lynnwood — is convergence," Gregory said. "With EDC activity focused more on south county, and businesses moving northward from King County, this has become the nexus for development activity in Puget Sound."

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