By Shawna De La Rosa – Reporter, Puget Sound Business Journal

Portland-based Schnitzer Properties expanded its Seattle-area industrial portfolio with two separate purchases last month totaling nearly $59 million. The most recent was for the four-building, 230,575-square-foot White River Corporate Park at 2002 W. Valley Highway N. in Auburn for $47.5 million. The deal was recorded by King County on Sept. 23. The price works out to $206 per square foot.

On Sept. 3, Schnitzer paid $11.1 million for the four-building, 48,000-square-foot Anderson Commerce Center in Kent. The price for that complex, located at 8602 S. 222nd St., works out to over $231 per square foot. The seller of both properties is an institutional fund managed by Boston-based TA Realty. Bill Condon and Matt McGregor represented Schnitzer in the transaction. Both properties are fully leased.

The acquisitions bring Schnitzer’s total Seattle-area footprint to 2.5 million square feet with 594 tenants.

The 74-year-old company, which has an office in Bellevue, focuses on industrial buildings that provide smaller spaces for local businesses, said Jordan Schnitzer, president and CEO of the company. The company has a total of 33 million square feet across five states. Eighty-four percent of the portfolio is industrial space and the average tenant space is about 9,000 square feet.

The company has been invested in the Seattle-area market since the late 1950s but has put more of a focus on the Seattle market in recent years, Schnitzer said.

“When I took over the company in 1990, I decided we should be a regionally driven, decentralized real estate investment company,” he said.

In addition to the Portland and Seattle markets, Schnitzer has properties in San Francisco, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona.

“We want more industrial space in the Seattle market,” Schnitzer said. “Building sites are hard to find so we were excited to find these sites for sale from a large pension fund adviser.”

The company is continuing to searching for more properties in the Seattle area, Schnitzer said.

Though the industrial vacancy rate has been climbing in the Puget Sound area and now stands at 8.2%, there's been an uptick in touring activity in the last quarter, according JLL's third quarter market report. Average asking rents have remained flat at $1.10 per square foot. Schnitzer Properties currently has 2.7 million square feet of new industrial space under construction across seven projects, but none of those are in the Seattle market.