Old school is meeting new wave in downtown Kirkland at the location of what many had eyeballed as the perfect location for a transit hub.
But the location of an old hardware store that first opened in 1890 at 424 Kirkland Avenue will become home later this year to Bungie Studios.
Bungie Studios is the Microsoft division responsible for the creation of "Halo 2," a wildly popular and hugely lucrative computer game that runs on Microsoft's Xbox game console and on computers.
Founded in 1991 by a couple of Chicago college students, the studio was snapped up by the Redmond software giant in 2000. The company had two goals at the beginning, according to a Microsoft press release.
Those were to: "develop games that combine brilliant technology, beautiful art, intelligent stories and deep gameplay, and then sell enough of those games to achieve its real goal of total world domination."
Megalomaniacal impulses aside, Bungie Studios needed a new space because it had outgrown its current home in a Microsoft satellite building at the end of State Route 520, said company spokeswoman Agnes Hansdorfer.
She said the 60 or so game designers will miss Taco Wednesdays in the company cafeteria, but Hansdorfer noted having a pancake house next to the new digs is a huge bonus.
"Kirkland was a great fit for Bungie in terms of geographic location, convenient amenities, a beach and the spirit of business," she said. It also helps that the Bungie will be able to design its new home from the ground up, Hansdorfer added.
The hardware-store site, which is currently being remodeled, is also larger than Bungie's current location. That will come in handy, she said. "We have actually already grown over the past few months, and our new building is designed to fit our current staff, plus a few additional positions we are hoping to fill shortly."
Finding a tenant is also a plus for Quadrant Corp, which owns the property and has inked a five-year lease with Bungie. "Finally some cash flow!" crowed Bill Boucher, vice president of communications for the Weyerhaeuser subsidiary.
Quadrant had originally wanted to build a hotel in combination with a transit center, said senior vice president of commercial properties Wally Costello last summer.
Quadrant has shifted its focus since then, according to Boucher. "That piece of property happens to be one of the last commercial properties we have," he said.
He said the company is pleased with its new tenant, though. "It's that creative class everybody is chasing after," Boucher added. "So it is a coup quite frankly."
Kirkland City Manager Dave Ramsay said he welcomed the new energy Bungie Studios will bring to downtown. "We're just part of the overall high-tech scene," he said, noting that Google moved into a building just up the street and across from the Post Office several months ago.
Mayor Mary-Alyce Burleigh has ambivalent feelings about the news. "It's sort of a win-lose sort of thing," she said. On the one hand, Burleigh said, she's delighted that Bungie Studios is moving in. On the other, the development means the end of any hopes the location could become a transit hub for the city.
That was an iffy proposition to begin with. Sound Transit didn't like the idea because Quadrant's plan for a hotel didn't meet the requirement for a transit-related project, according to Sound Transit staffer Vicki Youngs.
And Kirkland officials wouldn't OK a hotel on the site anyway because current zoning doesn't allow residential uses in that part of the city, the mayor said. That left office use, but the market for office space just wasn't there at the time, Quadrant's Costello said last summer.
That leaves the only the possibility of expanding the current transit hub on Third Street. "Sound Transit always wanted it (there) anyway," Burleigh said.
Overall city planning is also part of the issue, since a goal of city officials is to connect Park Place to the downtown core, she said. "Our challenge is to build a transit center that doesn't impede that," the mayor added. "I think we can do that."
There had been some talk originally of expanding the Third Street transit hub by carving out a piece of Peter Kirk Park, but there is no way that's gong to happen, according to Burleigh. For one thing, the city made a promise not to take any more parkland after the teen center was built, she said.
A lack of wiggle room and maintaining a mixture of vehicles and pedestrians on the site further complicate the plan, according to Ramsay. "I think those are going to be challenges for us," he said.
A deadline for building a new transit center in Kirkland has been extended to 2009, but preliminary work will begin this year, according to Ramsay.
"We're setting up a meeting with Sound Transit (in mid-May) to formally initiate the design process,' he said. Ramsay added that there are no preliminary design concepts in play yet.
"We are waiting for the selection of a design team," he said of step Sound Transit will take the lead in developing. But Ramsay stressed that there will also be lots of opportunity for public involvement in developing a new transit hub downtown.
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com or (206)461-1309.[[In-content Ad]]
