Kent seeks hotel developer for West Valley Highway office park

A new hotel might pop up someday along the West Valley Highway across from the Boeing Kent Space Center.

Kent city officials are looking into persuading a hotel developer to potentially build in the parking lot of the Centerpoint Office Park, a 26-acre site between South 204th Street and South 212th Street on the east side of the West Valley Highway.

“We are exploring putting a hotel in the parking lot of this office complex to help drive business,” said Ben Wolters, city economic and community development director, during a Sept. 1 report to the City Council. “We are doing a site and marketing analysis for a hotel in partnership with (developer) Fountainhead. We are bringing in hotels that have been eyeing Kent, and we are looking at potential zoning changes to make this happen.”

Fountainhead Northwest, a commercial and real estate development firm, owns four properties within the park, including two, eight-story office towers and a four-story building.

Boeing originally built the complex in the 1980s as part of its space and defense program before selling off the property after two decades of use. Boeing still has its large facility on the west side of the West Valley Highway.

“It’s one of most attractive offices in Kent but still has higher than we would like to see vacancy rates,” Wolters said about the idea of a hotel to help bring in more activity to the complex. “A lot of research shows the need for multiple activities in a business park.”

• Wolters also updated the council about the former Top Food & Drug store that closed more than a year ago and remains empty on the East Hill near South 260th Street and 104th Avenue Southeast.

Part of the problem with finding a new occupant has to do with the grocery site is owned by a different company than the rest of the shopping center, Wolters said.

“It also is too large for a lot of different formats out there for retail,” he said. “And that site is kind of tucked away which is not very attractive in the marketplace. They want a more visible site.

“Ownership is in no hurry to lease, but willing to sell. But (the owner) has large portfolio of properties around the country and it is not a priority for them. We are trying to make it a priority for them.”

Wolters expects the former grocery store will eventually be divided into several retail spaces.

“We are in the process to identify developers or leading retail tenants of at least 20,000 square feet in size to help spur what we think is the likely future of the site, which is to split it up into more manageable size retail property,” he said.

• The former site of Panther Lake Elementary School, at the southwest corner of Southeast 208th Street and 108th Avenue Southeast, remains another piece of property city officials would like to see developed.

City staff is working with the Kent School District on potential redevelopment of the property, possibly including a mix of retail, office and restaurants.

• Kent also has a contaminated site that city staff would like to see a developer take over, the former Maralco aluminum facility at 7730 S. 202nd St.

“We continue to make slow but steady progress on this large multi-acre site, 12 acres that has sat undeveloped which is very uncharacteristic for developable land in our low vacancy rate industrial valley,” Wolters said.

Aluminum dross, leftover material from aluminum smelting, is a material that poses various environmental hazards and there is challenge to figure out how much it would cost to clean it up, Wolters said.

“We found a partner willing and interested to invest in this and we are looking to partner with them for final environmental studies to clean this up,” Wolters said. “This is a site that has troubled us for a couple of decades and I am feeling like we are starting to get close to figure this site out.”