WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CALIF. — San Francisco-based Drawbridge Realty has purchased an office building situated on 19.6 acres at 31303 Agoura Road in Westlake Village. Terms of the transaction were not released. Bank of America occupies the 253,720-square-foot campus on an 11-year, triple-net lease through 2031. The bank employs approximately 1,000 employees at the property. Todd Tydlaska, Sean Sullivan, Mike Longo and Anthony DeLorenzo of CBRE’s El Segundo, Calif., office represented the undisclosed seller in the deal. Drawbridge acquired the asset using a portion of a $240 million equity commitment secured in 2019, providing Drawbridge with discretionary capital to acquire $600 million of additional properties in target markets across the United States. The new equity commitment was led by KKR, which played an important role in procuring the new capital alongside others.
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TUSTIN, CALIF. — Ready Capital has closed a $5.4 million loan for the stabilization of an approximately 43,000-square-foot, Class B office property located in Tustin’s Park Center submarket. The undisclosed sponsor will use loan proceeds to retire existing debt, while continuing its leasing efforts to stabilize the property at market rents. The non-recourse, floating-rate loan features a 36-month term, flexible prepayment and a facility to provide future funding for tenant leasing costs.
CHICAGO — Developers CA Ventures and Midwest Property Group Ltd. have broken ground on a 12-story, boutique office building located at 448 N. LaSalle St. in Chicago’s River North neighborhood. The Class A building is 75 percent pre-leased, as CA Ventures will occupy the lower five floors and WeWork will lease four floors. Chris Cassata and Craig Coupe of JLL will market the remaining three floors for lease. The 172,000-square-foot project is slated for completion in the first quarter of 2021. Amenities will include a rooftop deck, fitness center and bike room. Lamar Johnson Collaborative is the architect and Lendlease is the general contractor. Indure Build-to-Core Fund LLC provided project financing.
ROSEMONT, ILL. — Hofseth International has relocated to a larger 4,000-square-foot office space at 6300 N. River Road in Rosemont. Steven Goldstein of Jameson Commercial represented the tenant in the lease transaction. Goldstein also subleased Hofseth’s former 2,200-square-foot office at 5509 N. Cumberland Ave. in the O’Hare submarket. Hofseth is a producer, processor and marketer of seafood such as Norwegian Alaskan salmon.
MAITLAND, FLA. — Crocker Partners has sold Maitland Lakes, a 174,048-square-foot office building in Maitland, for $28 million. Crocker Partners acquired the Central Florida property in 2014 for $14.8 million. The firm upgraded the lobby, elevators, restrooms, corridors and redesigned the café. The building was 91 percent leased at the time of sale to tenants including Wiley Education Services and Sprint Nextel Corp., with an average lease term exceeding five years. Maitland Lakes is situated at 851 Trafalgar Court, eight miles north of downtown Orlando. Brightman-Gil Real Estate Investments acquired the asset. Ron Rogg of CBRE represented Crocker Partners in the transaction.
IRVING, TEXAS — Florida-based Benderson Development has purchased a ground-lease interest in the Pioneer Natural Resources headquarters campus in Irving for $218 million. The 1.1 million-square-foot, 10-story campus, which was developed by KDC, is located within Hidden Ridge, a public transit-served mixed-use development in the Las Colinas district. Additional terms of the deal were not disclosed.
AUSTIN, TEXAS — NorthMarq has arranged a $64.5 million loan for the refinancing of SXSW Center, a 13-story office building located at 1400 Lavaca St. in downtown Austin. Designed by Pei Cobb Freed, the Class A property spans 143,998 square feet and features a fitness center, bike storage and electric car charging stations. WeWork occupies three stories at the building. Jim Lemos of NorthMarq arranged the loan, which carries a fixed interest rate and a 26-year term, through Pacific Life Insurance Co. The borrower was not disclosed.
WEST HAVEN, CONN. — Arnold Peck’s Commercial World (APCW) has negotiated a 10,000-square-foot office lease in West Haven, a southwestern suburb of New Haven. Healthcare provider Cornell Scott Hill Health Center will occupy the freestanding building located at 410 Campbell Ave. on a 10-year lease. Mark Glassman of APCW represented Cornell Scott in the lease negotiations. Joel Nessno of Press/Cuozzo Commercial Services represented the landlord, Plimpton LLC.
NEW YORK CITY — Tri State Commercial has secured a 3,600-square-foot office lease in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Home care company Care Skills Home will occupy space on the third floor of an office building located at 1125 Fulton St. on a five-year lease beginning in March. Avi Akiva led a Tri State team that represented Care Skills Home in the lease negotiations. Akiva also represented the landlord, The Bawabeh Group.
At this point, it sounds like the movie “Groundhog Day,” but 2019 was another impressive year of growth and success for the greater Boston life sciences real estate market — and that growth shows no signs of subsiding any time soon. Duncan Gratton, Cushman & Wakefield Strong levels of venture capital investment, big pharmaceutical partnerships and merger and acquisition activity continued to fuel unprecedented demand for life sciences space, not only in and around Cambridge but also in submarkets like the Seaport, Watertown and certain Route 128 corridors. Venture capital (VC) funding for life sciences, while not quite at 2018 levels, remained robust with nearly $6 billion invested through the end of November. Major funding deals that closed in 2019 include Ginkgo Bioworks ($290 million), ElevateBio ($150 million) and Beam Therapeutics Inc. ($135 million), which all committed to leasing lab space in existing buildings and new developments throughout the area. Supply-Demand Balance The urban Massachusetts life sciences market, which includes Boston, Cambridge, and the inner suburbs of Watertown, Lexington, Medford and Waltham, now enjoys an inventory of about 20 million square feet and ended 2019 with a vacancy rate of just over 4 percent. Successful speculative developments at Arsenal Yards …