April 29, 2026
$220M data-center plan emerges in Duwamish area
Five years ago, in the Duwamish area, Carlyle Group paid $22 million for a cold-storage property. A few year later, it razed all the old buildings at 3625 First Ave. S., just south of the Spokane Street Viaduct. NAI Puget Sound Properties has since been offering the 4.6 acres as yard space.
This week came a new proposal for a four-story data center, carrying a nominal value of $220 million. Civil engineer PacLand filed the three-building plan on behalf of an unnamed client or clients. More names will emerge if the project advances; it could range in size from about 266,000 to 320,000 square feet.
The scheme comes on the heels of a Seattle Times report this month that Seattle City Light was weighing a pitch for five large data centers from unnamed developers, all to be in the city’s industrial south end. KIRO later identified them as Prologis, Equinix and Sabey — with one party having dropped out. Whether that trio would work together in a consortium, or separately, isn’t clear from city statements.
Prologis, the big logistics specialist, owns lots of industrial real estate in our market, some of it yard space or having old buildings to be redeveloped. The family-run Sabey, based in Tukwila, has a dedicated data-center arm; most of its projects are clustered around Quincy, in Eastern Washington. Equinix is a specialist in digital infrastructure, which often supports artificial intelligence. Its clients include Amazon Web Services. It’s based in the Bay Area.
Meanwhile, there’s already talk in City Hall about a possible moratorium on such in-city data centers, which could raise residential electricity rates. There haven’t yet been any public hearings or city council meetings on the matter.
Mayor Katie Wilson said in a statement this month, “The prospect of massive new data centers being built in Seattle has raised understandably intense public alarm. That’s why my team is working closely with Seattle City Light, City Council and stakeholders to identify a range of long-term policy approaches, including exploring a moratorium on siting new centers.”
Filing a plan early could be a way of avoiding a possible new moratorium and/or setting up a legal case to appeal it.
Brian Miller can be
reached by email at brian.miller@djc.com or by phone at (206) 219-6517.
