ITASCA, ILL. — Boyd Coffee has signed a lease for 14,080 square feet of warehouse space located at 1428 Norwood Ave. in Itasca, about 25 miles west of Chicago. Jeff Janda, Mike Plumb and Jay Farnam of Lee & Associates of Illinois LLC represented building ownership, KTR Capital Partners, in the transaction. Luke Heerema of Cresa Partners represented the tenant. Boyd Coffee is a manufacturer of coffee roasters and processing equipment.
ST. LOUIS — Paric Corp. has begun a $25 million renovation of St. Louis’ landmark Union Station, now a hotel, meeting, restaurant, entertainment and retail center. Lodging Hospitality Management will update all 539 rooms in the DoubleTree hotel and the exhibition and grand halls. The renovation will add approximately 50,000 square feet of meeting space, doubling the size of the hotel’s current meeting facilities. Completion of the project is slated for spring 2014. Lawrence Group is serving as the architect.
EVENDALE, OHIO — Marcus & Millichap has arranged the sale of Village Crossings, an 89,008-square-foot retail property in Evendale for $6.2 million. C.J. Jackson, Erin Patton, Craig Fuller and Scott Wiles of Marcus & Millichap’s Columbus, Ohio, office marketed the property on behalf of the seller, a local development company, and represented the buyer, a private fund, in the transaction. Village Crossings is located at 10400 Reading Road, about 14 miles north of Cincinnati. Aldi, JoAnn Fabric and Cincinnati Asian Market anchor the shopping center.
DEEPHAVEN, MINN. — A joint venture has broken ground on Deephaven Woods Senior Living, a 78-unit seniors living community in Deephaven, about 15 miles west of Minneapolis. St. Therese Catholic Church partnered with Ebenezer Society to form the joint venture, St. Therese Senior Living LLC. The senior living community is located on a 14-acre site on the church’s 26-acre campus. The two-story development will include independent, assisted living and memory care apartments. Deephaven Woods Senior Living is expected to open by summer 2014. Kraus-Anderson will build the community, and Ebenezer Management Services will provide daily operational and management services.
ST. CLOUD, MINN. — Towle Financial Services has arranged a $6.2 million permanent loan for Cedar Square Apartments in St. Cloud. Cedar East Limited Partnership owns the 240-unit, eight-building apartment complex. Proceeds from the loan were used to pay off the underlying CMBS first mortgage loan. “We had a number of financing options to pay off our maturing 10-year-old CMBS loan, and we chose the option that significantly reduced our interest cost,” says Jim Kelly, a principal with Cedar East Limited Partnership. Peter Austin of Towle originated the loan.
CHICAGO — South Korean-based investor Mirae Asset Global Investments has purchased 225 W. Wacker in Chicago from 225 West Wacker Acquisition Co. for $218 million. Mirae also borrowed $115 million in acquisition financing through Principal Real Estate Investors and Allianz Real Estate of America, which provided the five-year loan. The 650,812-square-foot property is currently 91 percent leased to tenants including Edwards Wildman Palmer, PPM America, Merrill Lynch, CBIZ, Booz & Co., True Partners Consulting and Apple. Bruce Miller, Jim Postweiler and Nooshin Felsenthal of Jones Lang LaSalle led the sales team, while Keith Largay, Dave Hendrickson and Ian Russell, also of Jones Lang LaSalle, led the financing efforts in the transaction.
MINNEAPOLIS — ARC Realty Finance Trust Inc. has closed on a $6.5 million mezzanine loan originated as part of $57.5 million in total financing provided to the ownership of the W Minneapolis. The 32-story, 229-room, full-service luxury hotel is located in downtown Minneapolis. Also known as The Foshay, the property was modeled after the Washington Monument when it was built in 1929 and was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1978 as an example of Art Deco architecture. The Foshay was originally built as office space until 2006, when the current ownership acquired, renovated and repositioned the property as the W Minneapolis.
LOMBARD, ILL. — The Alter Group has sold 1800 Springer Drive, a 60,838-square-foot office/data center building in Lombard, to CyrusOne. The data company occupies 96 percent of the space. The 427,000-square-foot property is located in the Oak Creek Center business park, an 11-building, 70-acre office complex originally developed by The Alter Group. Scott Latter of EnTrust Realty Advisors LLC and Jeffrey Ludwig of Alter360 represented the owner in the transaction. CyrusOne provides mission-critical data center facilities that protect and ensure the continued operation of IT infrastructure for more than 500 customers.
ELK GROVE VILLAGE, ILL. — Stage Equity Partners LLC has acquired a 52,126-square-foot medical office complex in Elk Grove Village, a northwest suburb of Chicago, for approximately $138 per square foot. The complex of four single-story interconnected buildings called Woodland Square was acquired in a direct off-market transaction from a local family partnership. The property is located in the the Alexian Brothers Medical Center campus, directly across the street from the 387-bed flagship hospital for the Alexian Brothers Health System. Fresenius North America and Midwest Sports Medicine anchor the property, which is 99 percent leased to 19 tenants.
The industrial real estate market in Southeast Wisconsin continued its climb upward during 2012 as the overall vacancy rate fell from 7.1 percent to 6.5 percent. The result was positive net absorption of 3.6 million square feet for the year. This trend marks two-and-a-half straight years without a quarter of negative absorption. Seven of the eight counties in the Milwaukee industrial market area posted a reduction in vacancies during 2012. In Kenosha County, for example, the vacancy rate dropped from 11.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 to 9.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. Two transactions by Venture One Real Estate LLC accounted for most of the positive net absorption. The first transaction, which occurred in December 2012, was the sale of a 62,000-square-foot facility to EMCO Chemical Distributors Inc. This deal was followed shortly by Venture One’s acquisition of the 160,300-square-foot former Cenveo Inc. facility in Kenosha. Kenosha’s industrial market should perform well this year because of overflow demand from the Racine County market, which will necessitate deals in Kenosha. The shortage of space in Racine County will make it a better candidate for build-to-suit and speculative developments in 2013. Transaction Highlights Strong demand in Waukesha …