Gemdale Gets $113M Loan for Seattle High-Rise Project

Skyglass Tower rendering. Image courtesy of Cushman and Wakefield

Gemdale USA Corp. has secured a $113 million construction loan for Skyglass Tower, a multifamily high-rise development in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. Cushman & Wakefield arranged the debt through AIG.

The 29-story tower’s total cost is estimated at $196 million, according to the developer’s website. Hewitt Architects is the project architect, and the property is slated to deliver in the second half of 2023.

Skyglass Tower will occupy 0.4 acres at 222 Dexter Ave. N. Development plans call for 338 apartments, 2,260 square feet of ground-floor retail and a wide range of amenities.

The site is across the street from Denny Park, 1 mile north of downtown Seattle. The area is home to Amazon’s extensive urban campus and Facebook’s Dexter offices. The neighborhood is highly sought after by multifamily developers and investors alike—Blackstone recently paid more than $300 million for two assets half a mile northeast.

Ready to rebound

Seattle has begun a slow path to recovery after battling the economic headwinds of 2020. The metro shed 92,300 jobs during the year ending in May, a 6.8 percent drop. Still, the unemployment rate fell to 4.9 percent in May, 90 basis points lower than the national rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Although remote work was not uncommon among Seattle’s tech-focused employers even before the pandemic, reopening office space is expected to have a positive impact on the commercial and multifamily markets. In April, Facebook, one of the largest employers in the area, was on track to reopen its offices at a 10 percent capacity, Puget Sound Business Journal reported.

In July, Multi-Housing News talked to two executives with TWG Development about the latest shifts in the Seattle development scene as well as the influence that major tech companies such as Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon have on the metro’s affordable housing inventory.