City of Puyallup

South Hill Business and Technology Center

A key City industrial site is the former-Microchip semiconductor fabrication plant, which contains almost 700,000 square feet of research park/chip manufacturing space in a 90-acre corporate campus environment. In 2007, this facility was purchased by the Benaroya Corporation, which has re-named it the “South Hill Business & Technology Center”. As they have successfully done with other ex-semiconductor sites elsewhere in the Northwest, Benaroya is currently renovating the site, with $4.5 million of tenant improvements to date and an additional $15-75 million planned, to accommodate a range of prospective new tenants including clean technology and biomedical firms, data/call centers and corporate offices. To date, 297,464 square feet of tenant space is under construction to be retro-fitted into a data center.

Parametrix, a prominent regional engineering firm, relocated its Northwest Design center to the faciltiy in December 2010. Over 100 regional employees moved into approximately 32,500 square feet of Class A office space at the facility.

Valley Avenue and Levee Road Industrial Development

Elsewhere, the industrial area on the north side of the Puyallup River, in and around the Park in Puyallup Industrial Park, includes numerous manufacturing and distribution facilities. During the late 1990s through today, a number of major industrial users have located within the Park in Puyallup, including:

The Fred Meyer Corporation constructed an approximately 1.0 million square foot distribution facility on 57 acres in the 1990’s, from which perishable and non-perishable food products are distributed to the Puget Sound region and Canada. A 365,000 square foot expansion was subsequently added, bringing total employment to approximately 325 employees.

Several manufacturing projects have been constructed in the Park in Puyallup along Levee Road since the mid-90’s. Serta Mattress Company has an approximately 80,000 square foot manufacturing and distribution facility on a 5.4 acre parcel, employing about 60 people. Next to Serta is a three-building manufacturing complex totaling 230,000 square feet. Adjacent to this is Sea-Tac Packaging, a local container company which constructed a new 93,000 square foot facility in 2003-2004 and constructed an additional phase in 2006.

Over the past six years, Northwest Building Corporation, owners of the Park in Puyallup, also developed a building complex in the Park, containing small-to-middle size spaces for industrial tenants. Three buildings, totaling over 230,000 square feet of space, have been constructed thus far and are leased to a variety of tenants. Comcast is the sole occupant of the third of these buildings (an 80,000 square foot facility) housing their operations base for Western Washington, employing about 250 people at the site.

Miles Sand and Gravel Company, a large regional construction company which recently acquired another major local firm (Woodworth Construction) has rennovated and re-used the vacated Cornforth-Campbell auto dealership, located on Valley Avenue, for its new consolidated corporate headquarters and testing laboratory.

Since 2006, IntraCorp, an industrial developer, has been developing two industrial buildings totaling 825,000 square feet on 44 acres on Levee Road. Tenants for this site include O’Reilly - Auto Parts Distribution Center (employing over 300 persons); Jack-N-Box Distribution and IDX. This project also included a new public roadway. The Delacey warehouse project located on Valley Avenue, is proposed to be a 113,000 square foot building, and is under permit review in 2010.

Valley Avenue Corridor

In the last four years, there has also been significant industrial development in the Valley Avenue corridor immediately west of the Park in Puyallup. This includes:

The LOI “Dollar Store” warehouse, a 350,000 square foot distribution facility which was occupied in mid-2005.

The Schnitzer NW Valley Avenue development comprises 445,000 square feet of industrial/warehouse space in five buildings on a 24-acre property. Three of these buildings are now occupied with the balance nearing completion of construction. New tenants to this center include Panera Breads bakery/distribution, Leggett & Platt equipment/materials, Mitsui-Soko Corporation and others.

City Beverages, a beer distribution firm, recently completed a major remodel and expansion to the 142,000 square foot facility on Levee Road previously occupied by Graybar Electric, to house their local operations.

East Main

Development activity also continues to occur in the City’s Inter Avenue/East Main industrial area, including a 49,000 square foot addition to P&J Machinery, an existing aero-space manufacturer providing parts to Boeing. This project was under construction in 2010, with occupancy expected in early 2011. While the aforementioned industrial parks in North Puyallup cater primarily to larger corporate tenants, Inter Avenue contains smaller lots and houses smaller, locally-based industrial/service-oriented users. In the last ten years, at least nine different small industrial projects of varying sizes/users have been constructed, or are under construction, in the Inter Avenue area, including primarily local “startup” companies.