North Star Glove has signed a lease amendment to more than double its footprint at the historic Willamette Building in Tacoma's Nalley Valley, expanding from 27,600 to 65,879 square feet in what brokers are calling one of the South Sound's most significant office transactions in years. The deal, signed September 1, brings together the century-old glove manufacturer with two newly affiliated businesses under one roof: a creative production studio and a marketing and data firm.
The expansion, first reported by The News Tribune, adds Suite N200 and the R Building at 2926 S. Steele St. to North Star Glove's existing space at 2916 S. Steele St. Harrison Laird, a principal at Lee & Associates who represented the landlord alongside brokers John Bauder, Vanessa Herzog, Justin Froelich and Simran Kaur, said the transaction ranks among the most significant office deals the region has seen in years. Guru Singh represented the tenant in the deal, which carries undisclosed terms.
North Star Glove came under new ownership on May 15, with an ownership group that includes John Watson, Ben Matteucci and Doug Jorgensen. Watson, who also serves as co-owner and CEO of North Star Glove, said the group plans to invest in the company, expand its production capabilities and build a stronger domestic supply chain. He added that the expansion gives North Star room to grow without disconnecting it from the Tacoma community.
Three Brands, One Campus
The new space folds in Evolv Creative, which offers high-end video, photography and brand-content production, and Mysterious Inc., a marketing, technology and data firm founded and led by Watson. Matteucci serves as co-founder and executive of Mysterious Inc., alongside co-founder and executive Doug Jorgensen. According to the lease details reported by The News Tribune, the three business brands will work together as well as independently grow and serve their own clients.
Singh said the deal gives the ownership group the infrastructure to grow domestic manufacturing, a creative studio and a strategy firm from one campus. The new space includes more than 33,000 square feet of office space along with existing warehouse space, giving North Star Glove room to bring in new printing, textile-processing and dotting equipment. That equipment will allow the company to move production processes historically handled by outside suppliers directly into its Tacoma facility, expanding in-house manufacturing for a glove maker that specializes in premium industrial-grade gloves.
North Star Glove dates back to 1910 and has more than a century of history in Tacoma, with products made in the city for generations. As reported by North Star Glove, the company manufactures the majority of its work gloves directly in Tacoma while maintaining a hybrid model that uses globally sourced materials and local assembly for select catalog items. The company built long-standing customer relationships over that history, and in 1960 it expanded its Pacific Northwest footprint by purchasing the Salem, Oregon-based Myers Glove Company, renaming it The Oregon Glove Company, according to Pnwonderland.
A Building Built for Manufacturing
The Willamette Building itself carries its own industrial pedigree. Constructed between 1907 and 1908 by the Cornell Brothers and designed by Tacoma architect Frederick Heath, the 240,000-square-foot brick complex was originally built as the flagship facility for the Willamette Casket Company and was promoted at the time as the largest manufacturing factory west of St. Louis, according to Connect CRE. Developer Horizon Partners Northwest acquired the complex in May 2018 for $6 million from seller F.S. Harmon Manufacturing Co., preserving the site for industrial, maker and creative tenants, per the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.
Horizon Partners Northwest completed a major renovation of the building in May 2026, converting 35,000 square feet on the first and second floors into 18 makerspace studio units ranging from 1,019 to 3,741 square feet, the same Connect CRE report notes. That renovation modernized the property's creative and industrial hub identity just months before North Star Glove's own expansion took shape.
Nalley Valley's Manufacturing Legacy
The Willamette Building sits within Tacoma's 1,900-acre Nalley Valley industrial district, which offers direct arterial connections to Interstate 5, State Route 16 and Highway 509, making it a primary logistics hub for Pierce County freight and manufacturing, per the Commercial Brokers Association. The district takes its name from Croatian immigrant Marcus Nalley, born Marko Narancich, who founded Nalley Fine Foods in 1918 with door-to-door potato chip sales before building a landmark food processing factory in the valley during the early 1940s, as detailed by SouthSoundTalk. Nalley Valley has carried that industrial-engine identity for Tacoma for nearly a century.
The North Star Glove expansion marks the largest office lease signed in Pierce and Thurston counties in over two years, a distinction that stands out in a regional commercial real estate environment where large-scale office and industrial lease commitments have been relatively scarce over the past two years. The deal also comes weeks after the Tacoma-Pierce County Manufacturing Industrial Council hosted congressional staff at the Willamette Building on August 31 to highlight the region's entrepreneurial ecosystem, featuring North Star Glove alongside other local small-scale manufacturers.
Laird's team has been active elsewhere in Tacoma's landmark properties too. In April, he reported executing eight commercial leases at downtown Tacoma's historic Old City Hall restoration, part of a downtown leasing comeback that Hoodline covered earlier this year. It remains unclear how quickly North Star Glove will complete equipment installation for its expanded textile-processing and dotting capabilities, or whether additional hiring will follow the physical footprint expansion.
