By Eric Fetters
Herald Writer
EVERETT — The Everett Plaza shopping center at the corner of 52nd Street and Evergreen Way has sold for $7.95 million to Asia First Inc., a Seattle property management company.
It’s the second multimillion-dollar shopping center deal in Everett this year. The seller this time was Everett Plaza Shopping Center, a local partnership.
"It’s been a really good shopping center and performed well over the years," said Stan Rosen of Rosen-Harbottle Commercial Real Estate, the Bellevue firm that brokered the sale.
The nearly 80,000-square-foot strip mall, sitting on more than six acres, was built in the mid-1960s and renovated in 1996, Rosen said. It is home to Washington Mutual Home Loan Center and Earl Scheib Paint &Body. Other tenants include Display &Costume, the state Department of Licensing and New &Used Liquidators.
Krista Haverly of CB Richard Ellis Real Estate, who is handling leases in the center, said there is less than 10,000 square feet of vacant space there.
Asia First has owned other properties in Snohomish County, including the North Creek Estates apartment complex in Bothell, which was recently sold to a Snohomish-based partnership for $6.6 million, according to county records.
Rosen said the Everett Plaza Shopping Center partners sold the center because they wanted to invest in a larger property. The partnership, which also owns other properties in this area, bought a Tukwila shopping center this month for $11.7 million.
The Everett Plaza deal follows the $19 million sale of the much bigger Everett Mall Plaza, located near Everett Mall, earlier this spring. That sale still ranks as one of the largest property transactions in the Puget Sound region this year.
The two shopping center deals, along with a number of other commercial real estate transactions in Everett, may indicate a healthy market overall. Because newer, first-class retail space is relatively hard to find in Everett, there is continued demand for older storefront space in good condition, Haverly said.
According to CB Richard Ellis reports from the last quarter of 2001, the county’s retail vacancy rate stood between 4 and 5 percent, compared to double-digit vacancy rates for office space.
"All in all, I think the retail market’s doing pretty well," Haverly said.
You can call Herald Writer Eric Fetters at 425-339-3453
or send e-mail to fetters@heraldnet.com.
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