MetLife, Inc. (NYSE:MET) announced today that it will develop three new industrial distribution parks for nearly $63 million in the Seattle area with the Panattoni Development Company, a privately held, national developer based in Newport Beach, Calif. The greenfield sites will add more than 900,000 square feet of high-quality warehouse space in the Seattle region. MetLife will be the majority owner and Panattoni will be the managing minority partner.

The largest of the projects is the Des Moines Creek Business Park, which will comprise three buildings totaling 535,830 square feet on a 37-acre site. Des Moines is a southern suburb near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. MetLife and Panattoni have options to expand the site by an additional one million square feet.

The two other developments are the Steele Building, which will offer 206,463 square feet of warehouse space on 8.6 acres, and the Tamarack Building, a 159,250-square foot industrial park to be built on 7.0 acres. Both sites are in Sumner, Wash., also a southern suburb of Seattle.

Construction of the three greenfield warehouse sites will create a total of 600 jobs. Construction is expected to be completed by mid-2015 for Steele and Tamarack, and by the end of 2015 for Des Moines.

“These three industrial parks we are developing in the Seattle area demonstrate our commitment to continuing to diversify our real estate equity holdings through the addition of high quality industrial assets,” said Robert Merck, senior managing director and global head of real estate for MetLife. “We have an experienced partner in Panattoni and our national collaboration in the industrial park segment is off to a great start, first in Atlanta and now in Seattle.”

In July, the two companies announced they would team up to develop an initial portfolio of eight state-of-the-art industrial facilities in four states totaling nearly 6 million square feet on 356 acres. The first is the Lambert Farms Distribution Center near Atlanta, a 3 million square foot distribution space that may accommodate up to two 1.5 million square foot facilities. In addition to the Atlanta and Seattle projects, the companies plan to build facilities in Chicago, the Inland Empire market of California, and another project in the Northeast Atlanta sub-market.

About MetLife

MetLife, Inc. (NYSE:MET), through its subsidiaries and affiliates (“MetLife”), is one of the largest life insurance companies in the world. Founded in 1868, MetLife is a global provider of life insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management. Serving approximately 100 million customers, MetLife has operations in nearly 50 countries and holds leading market positions in the United States, Japan, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. For more information, visit www.metlife.com.