An article posted in Tuesday’s Seattle Times, reported that Kemper Development’s expansion of Lincoln Square has been delayed by at least 15 months due to the current market conditions. Construction on the project will not begin until the middle of 2010 at the earliest.
As previously reported, the expansion plans to bring a 31-story office tower with over 500,000 sq ft, a 42-story condo with 200 homes, as well as a hotel with 120 rooms.
This delay shows a reflection of the economy leveling off in Downtown Bellevue. There are currently three major condo projects available for purchase in the Downtown Bellevue area. Delaying the condo portion of the project will be a beneficial for all projects, allowing for less competition now and more engagment by the second wave of condo owners in the future.
Kemper Freeman Jr. was quoted in regards to the delay of the project, “We thought we could do it all at once…We finally said, That’s nuts.”
This announcement comes weeks after European Tower announced the delay of its project as well.
I sure hope they raise the height limits before this project is done, it would be a great spot for a 650 foot tower!
haha, never thought about that…could work out to their benefit!
Kemper is a smart man and is showing a lot of restraint and I’ll bet his timing works out fine.
I do wonder how much this has to do with availability of money and how much is tied up in his other projects.
This is trivial but i hope to hell they don’t name this development “lincoln square 2”. God that just sounds stupid. Wouldn’t it sound better if they named it “lincoln Place” perhaps. The Bellevue Collection would sound better if it was “Bellevue Place, Bellevue Square, Lincoln Square, and Lincoln Place” rather than Lincoln Square 2.