Seattle firm spends $29M for two Richmond-area office buildings

For the second time in two years, a Discovery Drive office building has sold. (Mike Platania photos)

An Emerald City investment firm has dropped nearly $30 million to get back into the Richmond-area real estate market. 

Last month Seattle-based Elliott Bay Capital Trust bought a pair of Richmond-area medical office buildings: 8006 Discovery Drive in Henrico and 1000 Boulders Parkway in Chesterfield, county records show. 

The building at Discovery Drive is the larger of the two at 59,000 square feet and fetched the larger price at $20.3 million. The Boulders building is about 34,700 square feet and sold for $9 million.

Elliott Bay closed both deals on June 25. 

The Discovery Drive property is about 75% occupied, with tenants such as VitalCare Family Practice and James River Cardiology. It sold for more than twice its most recent assessed value of $9.8 million.

The seller in the Discovery deal was an entity tied to local developer Jimmy Stanley of Stanley Shield Partnership, who didn’t respond to a request for comment. Commonwealth Commercial’s Tucker Dowdy and Robbie Berndt handle leasing in the building. 

1000 Boulders Parkway is fully occupied.

The Boulders building is fully leased to Pulmonary Associates of Richmond and Tucker Psychiatric. The property was most recently assessed at $5.8 million. The seller was an entity tied to one of the physicians of Pulmonary Associates. Thalhimer’s Bo McKown, Eric Robison and Birck Turnbull worked the deal.

Elliott Bay specializes in acquiring medical office buildings and has holdings all over the country. The exact size of its portfolio is unclear, though it describes itself as “one of the country’s most active healthcare real estate investors.” The firm did not respond to requests for comment.

The deals mark a return to the local market for Elliott Bay, which owned a dialysis center at 1501 Santa Rosa Road in Henrico nearly a decade ago. It bought that building in 2017 for $2.7 million and sold it two years later for the same price, according to Henrico records. 

Right next door to Elliott Bay’s newly acquired Discovery Drive property is Marwaha Plaza, a near-identical office building at 8002 Discovery Drive that local investor Gagan Marwaha bought at auction last year for $4.3 million.

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