Dec 03, 2019

City of Sammamish

Daniel Pingrey is the new Sammamish police chief. Pingrey was assistant chief and administrative sergeant for the Sammamish Police Department from 1999 to 2005, and was captain for the King County Sheriff's Office at Sammamish City Hall since April 2018. He began his law enforcement career in 1986 as a Kirkland police officer. He replaces Michelle Bennett, the city's first female police chief, who was promoted to major within the King County Sheriff's Office.

Zipwhip

Zipwhip hired Nimrod Vered as senior vice president of engineering and promoted James Lapic to chief technology officer. Vered led development of workplace analytics at Microsoft. He also worked at Cisco, VoloMetrix and Check Point Software Technologies. Lapic has over two decades of technology experience, including eight years at Zipwhip. Seattle-based Zipwhip is a cloud software company for business texting.

Madrona Venture Group

Seattle venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group awarded the 14th Annual Madrona Prize to a University of Washington team using artificial intelligence to help physicians with accurate predictive models in time-sensitive and potentially life-saving situations. The team consisted of Ph.D./M.D. graduate students Gabriel Erion and Joseph Janizek, with physicians Carly Hudelson and Nathan White and the head of UW's Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence for Medicine and Science, professor Su-In Lee. Madrona invests in early-stage technology companies in the Pacific Northwest.

Puget Sound Energy

Bellevue-based Puget Sound Energy awarded a $10 million, 2-year contract to Willdan Group to deliver its Small Business Direct Install Program. Through the program, Willdan works with local contractors to provide building energy assessments and retrofits of controls, lighting, domestic hot water and refrigeration equipment. This is the fifth consecutive time that Willdan has been awarded the program. Anaheim, California-based Willdan provides technical and consulting services to utilities, government agencies and private industry.

DBIA

The Design-Build Institute of America honored Tim Graybeal, a design-build manager at Lydig Construction in Spokane, with a 2019 Distinguished Leadership Award. Graybeal won in the Industry Professional category. He has completed over $750 million in design-build projects over the past decade and serves on the project review committee of the state Capital Projects Advisory Review Board.

Sage Homes Northwest

Everett-based Sage Homes Northwest earned kudos for systems integration as part of the 2019 Oracle Construction and Engineering Awards. Sage switched from manual data entry to Oracle's Primavera cloud platform to connect project management with accounting. Mike Brown, Sage's business systems and process manager, spearheaded the move. Data analysis consulting firm ProvenBI helped integrate Sage's accounting software with Primavera.

Guardian Roofing

Auburn-based Guardian Roofing is holding its second Guardian Halo Project, which provides a free major roof repair or replacement to a homeowner in dire need. The company is seeking nominations until Jan. 31 and will announce a winner on Feb. 4. A Brown’s Point family won last year’s contest. More information is at https://tinyurl.com/Guardian-Halo.

Nov 29, 2019

JLL secures $110M refi for Bellevue office park

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Bellefield Office Park is a 15-building complex with about 500,000 square feet.

JLL announced the $110 million refinancing of Bellefield Office Park for owners Lionstone Investments and Talon Private Capital. JLL's Colby Mueck, Tom Wilson and Laura Sellingsloh secured the loan from Bank of America. The 56-acre, 15-building complex has about 500,000 square feet. Talon renovated the complex from 2013-2017 at a stated cost of around $15 million, and it's now about 96% leased. Current ownership paid about $120 million in 2014 for the complex, which ran into trouble following the recession. Prior owners were Whitehall Street Real Estate (an entity of Goldman Sachs) and, following a loan default, Walton Street Capital. Talon has led the repositioning effort for the new ownership. CBRE leases the space at Bellefield, which will be less than a mile from East Main Station, where light rail service will begin in 2023.

KM's Loveall wins local honor

Loveall

Kidder Mathews announced that its Patricia Loveall was recently selected by national organization Connect Media as one of its Women in Real Estate Awards honorees. A local industry veteran and SIOR member, she's been involved in the sale and leasing of more than 20 million square feet of office and industrial space, according to KM, with land sales totaling over 1,000 acres. Her clients have include Weyerhaeuser, Paccar, Univar USA and Unisource. Also in the Seattle's group of 10 honorees were Ada Healey of Vulcan Real Estate, Lori Hill of Unico Properties, Anne Marie Koehler and Erika Koehler of NKF, Lauren Menashe of Menashe Commercial and Lauren Noecker of NBP Capital.

ULI seeks fresh blood

The Urban Land Institute is seeking new students for its Center for Leadership (formerly the Center for Sustainable Leadership). Carol Murray leads the mentorship program. Applications are due by Jan. 3. Details and info: northwest.uli.org.

KM buys MCG, seals Blackstone deal

Kidder Mathews announced the recent purchase of Sacramento, California-based Management Consulting Group. That firm, led by industry veteran Sallie Merker, provides asset, advisory and management for a portfolio of about 735,000 square feet. It includes office, industrial and retail.

Separately, KM also announced this week that it'll manage part of the Link Industrial Properties portfolio. That chunk of Link's overall 355 million-square-foot U.S. portfolio wasn't detailed in size, but it spans three states: Washington, Oregon and Nevada. Link is the relatively new industrial platform for Blackstone, which this year has acquired industrial properties in SeaTac, Tukwila and Mukilteo for about $50 million. Link doesn't have a local office.

CCIM elects new board members, president

The Washington state chapter of CCIM (Certified Commercial Investment Member) announced its new president and board for 2020. Gary Hunter of Westlake Associates will serve as president. Joining the board will be Kelly Richardson of Rowley Properties, Suria Elbeitar of Pentavirate Global Investments, Leigh Wang of Bank of America and Christopher Bornhoft of Windermere Real Estate. Separately, the organization named two new members: Karen Fairall of Rush Property Management and Claire Matten of Sterling CRE Advisors.

D.A. Davidson

D.A. Davidson & Co. added veteran equity trader Todd Hanneman to its institutional equity trading team. Hanneman has over 20 years of experience in institutional equities, most recently as a managing director with Piper Jaffray. He also worked in sales and trading with RBC Capital Markets and RBC Dain Rauscher. D.A. Davidson is headquartered in Montana, with offices in Denver, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle.

Zipwhip

Seattle-based Zipwhip moved its headquarters to 75,000 square feet in Elliott Bay Office Park. The company signed a 10-year lease and says the space will allow it to nearly double its headcount to 500 employees. Interior designer Christine Chaney, architect Marvin Yamaguchi and Zipwhip employees designed the new space. Zipwhip is a cloud software company for business texting. Earlier this year, it closed a $51.5 million funding round led by Goldman Sachs Private Capital.

WS Acquisition

Guardian Capital Partners made an undisclosed investment in Eugene, Oregon-based WS Acquisition, which operates Western Shelter Systems and CrewBoss. Western Shelter makes emergency shelters and field support systems while CrewBoss makes fire-resistant personal protective equipment for firefighters. Guardian is based near Philadelphia. It invests in lower-middle-market consumer products, niche manufacturing and specialty service companies.