Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega, founder of retail giant Zara, has agreed to buy a South Lake Union skyscraper for $323 million, according to King County deed records filed Tuesday.
Forty-story Kiara, a luxury apartment building at 111 Terry Ave. N., has 461 units and 15,247 square feet of retail. It opened in 2018. It was previously owned by Vancouver, Washington-based Holland Residential, which owns properties in Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado and Arizona.
The deal is a vote of confidence for Seattle’s downtown recovery, said Sam Wayne, Cushman & Wakefield’s managing director of multifamily capital markets. He considers South Lake Union part of the downtown core because the two areas house most office buildings.
“Given some of the recent headlines of jobs being trimmed at some of the companies, this is a good counternarrative,” Wayne said.
Ortega’s family office, Pontegadea, already owns two South Lake Union office blocks with over 40,000 square feet leased to Amazon. The acquisition, completed in 2019 for $740 million, is Pontegadea’s largest U.S. investment.
This year, Pontegadea bought a 64-story luxury apartment building in New York for $500 million, the Royal Bank Plaza in Toronto for CA$1.2 billion ($916 million) and an office building in Glasgow, Scotland, for 200 million pounds ($237 million).
Cushman & Wakefield’s Wayne said that much like other cities where Pontegadea has invested, Seattle is also a global market that attracts international attention.
“Seattle’s been on the map for the last decade for international capital looking for access to global gateway markets with strong demographics, robust employment and lifestyle that’s attractive to that cohort,” Wayne said.
Europe’s third-richest man, Ortega has a 59% stake in Zara’s parent company Inditex, according to Bloomberg. His real estate firm owns several buildings that house Zara as well as other commercial real estate properties in North America and Europe.
According to Bloomberg, the company has in recent years been investing in telecommunications, energy infrastructure and renewable-energy plants. This year, Pontegadea also invested about $700 million in logistics facilities in the U.S.
