Downtown Kent will take on a whole new look after the City Council agreed to sell the 9.3-acre Naden property for $18.3 million to a Minnesota-based developer to build a manufacturing campus.
City leaders would love to see an aerospace company come to the vacant site, especially with the history of Boeing and Blue Origin in town, but what manufacturer ends up on the property remains to be determined.
The council voted 7-0 on Feb. 3 to sell the property, which the city has owned since 2006, to Mortenson Development, of Minneapolis.
Mortenson is a major builder, developer and engineering firm. The company, with offices in 12 cities, including Seattle, is best known for building stadiums and arenas, including Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle and the future Las Vegas Athletics baseball stadium. But it also builds industrial and manufacturing facilities.
Councilmember Bill Boyce, who served on a developer selection committee with Mayor Dana Ralph, Councilmembers Satwinder Kaur and Marli Larimer and city staff, looks forward to the project.
“It was an honor for me to be on the panel and be part of the selection process,” Boyce said at the meeting. “I was totally impressed with the leadership team for Mortenson (which visited Kent from Minnesota). You can tell this is something that they really want to be part of.”
Boyce compared its potential to other city projects.
“It could be like a landmark like ShoWare or Meet Me on Meeker and then we got Naden coming, so I feel really good,” Boyce said.
City leaders want a manufacturer that’s going to bring a lot of jobs to downtown.
“I think that I’m most excited about, in addition to the jobs that are going to be downtown, but it’s just all of that foot traffic and that revenue and people going to the lunch places and going to happy hour and just all those things that come with more jobs and activity in downtown,” Larimer said.
Bill Ellis, the city chief economic development officer who spearheaded the project, agreed with Larimer.
“There’s the direct impact and then there’s the indirect,” Ellis said. “It’s all the spending that you’re talking about and then all the spending that also induces. And so it’s that multiplier effect that comes from having an employment use that is unique and one of the reasons why we’ve positioned the property as we have.”
In its proposal to the city, Mortenson estimated the economic benefits of a manufacturing campus on the property could be $62 million in the first year and as much as $1.1 billion over 20 years, when looking at the jobs created, tax revenue and local spending by employees.
The Kent Reporter reached out to Mortenson for comment, including why they wanted the property, a timeline and potential uses. A company spokesperson declined to answer the questions but said they expect to issue a media release about the purchase by the end of next week.
Ellis said Mortenson has constructed 470 manufacturing projects and works with companies on build-to-suit models, which can mean facilities with higher ceilings, advanced manufacturing floor strength and electrical power.
Ellis said the property drew three request for proposals and was attractive for manufacturing with a Puget Sound Energy substation on a neighboring property, two state highways (SR 516 and SR 167) nearby for commuters and the presence of a main King County sewer trunk for wastewater.
A new manufacturing campus, shown in this image, would sit just east of Highway 167, north of Willis Street and south of Meeker Street. COURTESY IMAGE, Mortenson Development
City leaders also considered proposals by Irvine, California-based Panattoni Development and Portland, Oregon-based Specht Development, Ellis said. Panattoni recently built a 310-acre industrial park in Frederickson, near Puyallup. Specht helped build the ilani Casino Hotel Resort in Ridgefield, north of Vancouver, Washington.
Ellis told the council as part of the agreement no data centers or distribution facilities will be built at the site, in part because the city wants a company with a high number of employees.
As part of the agreement, Mortenson must build a new north-south street to connect Willis Street to Meeker Street along the property.
Mortenson met the city’s target price of $45 per square foot for the 406,685-square-foot property, Ellis said. The company also agreed to commit to an architectural design that will help serve as a gateway to downtown. He said the project would be built in one phase if one user takes the entire site or it could be broken into two phases if a smaller facility goes up first but leads to success for the rest of the development.
The $18.3 million price certainly gives the city a good return on property it began to buy in 2006 for a potential aquatic center.
The property was originally purchased in 2006 for $5.4 million, according to city Finance Director Paula Painter. Additional work was done on the site (demolition) for approximately $200,000 that year resulting in an expense of $5.6 million. Between 2013 and 2024, additional property purchases were made by the city totaling approximately $963,000.
Ellis shared a figure of $11 million at the council meeting as the cost to the city for the property, which Painter said is the estimated cost adjusted for inflation (in today’s dollars) of the original and subsequent land purchases and site improvements.
City leaders abandoned the plan for an aquatic center on the Naden property because of the high costs and eventually agreed to partner with the YMCA to build a fitness facility and pool on the East Hill that opened in 2019. The city spent $11 million to help build the YMCA.
The decision to not build an aquatic center led the council to try to sell the property to a developer, including a zoning change in 2019 to allow manufacturing uses.
A proposal by a developer to build a hotel on a portion of the property fell through in 2020, partly because of COVID-19 and a pause on new developments.
A rendering up close of what a new manufacturing campus in downtown Kent might look like, on the Naden property north of Willis Street. COURTESY IMAGE, Mortenson Development
The city put out a request for qualifications in 2021 to developers and appeared to have a deal with Seattle-based Avenue 55 to build a technology center that would house numerous businesses. But negotiations ended in 2023 between the city and Avenue 55.
City staff then released a request for proposals in May 2025 from developers that led to the latest plan by Mortenson.
Mayor Ralph has dealt with the Naden property for many years as a planning commissioner, council member and now mayor for the past 12 years. She said she’ll be glad to no longer see Naden as a city meeting agenda item.
“We are really anticipating great things coming to our downtown,” Ralph said. “Councilmember Larimer, you hit it right on the head with (your comment about) the increased jobs and the number of people in the downtown. It is only a good thing for the community.”
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