Unico finds a way.

We have a reputation for being unafraid of an unconventional approach, but our strategy is simple, even if our tactics aren’t. We specialize – in emerging markets, in office and multifamily, and in making our buildings places people want to be.

Our Snapshot

Unico Properties is a private real estate firm offering user-centered investment, development, management, and sustainability services in emerging markets across the United States. Founded in 1953, we employ over 300 real estate-obsessed people between our Seattle-based headquarters and the cities we invest in.

With partners ranging from large institutional investors to high-net-worth individuals, we’ve formed over 55 investment vehicles from core-plus through opportunistic investments in dynamic cities across the U.S. including Seattle, Portland, Denver, Austin, Salt Lake City, and Nashville.

We’re presently co-invested in and actively managing a portfolio of exhaustively considered, office, multifamily, and mixed-use properties. We create innovative, people-focused building experiences through a cadre of subsidiary companies which provide boutique expertise and execution for our own accounts and select third-party clients.

Our Story

Unico was formed in 1953 when our founder, Roger L. Stevens, and his investment partners, Alfred R. Glancy, Jr., Ben Tobin, and H. Adams Ashforth, were selected by the University of Washington to lease, manage, and develop the University of Washington’s 10-acre Metropolitan Tract in downtown Seattle.

Over the next six decades, we developed 3.3 million square feet of high-rise office and retail space on and adjacent to the Tract, including the iconic Rainier Tower and award-winning Two Union Square. The developments were structured as part of a lucrative ground lease with the University; this lease expired in 2014, however we retain our long-held management assignment for the portfolio.

In the mid-1990s we began a deliberate evolution from downtown Seattle-focused owner/operator to a real estate investment firm actively buying and developing properties throughout the Northwestern and Western United States.

Today, our 17.7 million square foot portfolio has been assembled through our reinvestment alongside raised capital from institutional and private real estate investors. Descendants of the Glancy, Tobin, and Ashforth families remain involved as shareholders and members of Unico’s board of directors.