RALEIGH, N.C. — Property Income Advisors Inc. is redeveloping 540 Tech Center, a 110,500-square-foot life sciences property in Raleigh. Located at 4912-4924 Green Road, 540 Tech Center is a two-building property that allows for research and development, office, flex and warehouse users. 540 Tech Center’s amenities include multiple entry points, a 4.3 per 1,000 square feet parking ratio, one dock door per building and two onsite generators. Property Income Advisors changed the name of 540 Tech Center from its previous name, which was the address of the building. The firm also is currently making renovations to the property, including parking lot upgrades, landscape improvements, new monument signage, exterior paint, modernized restrooms and adding a new leasing center. The newly renovated buildings will have open ceilings and expansive floor plates with one of the twin buildings ready for tenant improvements to commence by the end of the year. As of October 2021, the property will be fully vacant. Built in 1983, the previous tenant was Conduent. Mac Hammer, Kent Honeycutt and Stacy Mbithi of Cushman & Wakefield will oversee leasing at the property.
Life Sciences
Sterling Bay West, Harrison Street to Acquire Life Sciences Portfolio in Sorrento Mesa, Plan 1.1 MSF Development
by Amy Works
SAN DIEGO — Sterling Bay West and Harrison Street have agreed to acquire an office and life sciences portfolio in San Diego’s Sorrento Mesa submarket. City Office REIT is selling the assets for an undisclosed price. Located at 10390-10445 Pacific Center Court, 5910 Pacific Center Blvd. and 9985 Pacific Heights, the portfolio comprises four life sciences lab buildings, an empty building ready for speculative office/lab space, two office buildings totaling 420,229 square feet and five acres of excess land. The buyers plan to develop up to 1.1 million square feet of ground-up, Class A life sciences campus facilities on the site. Construction is slated to begin in 2023 and will be completed in phases.
WATERTOWN AND NEWTON, MASS. — PCCP LLC has provided a $39.8 million loan for the refinancing of a portfolio of three life sciences and creative office buildings totaling 124,946 square feet in Watertown and Newton, two western suburbs of Boston. The two Watertown properties were built in the 1940s and total 43,344 square feet. The Newton property was constructed in 1900, renovated in 2017 and consists of 81,602 square feet. The borrower, Massachusetts-based KS Partners LLC, will use a portion of the proceeds to fund capital improvements. The portfolio was 94 percent leased at the time of sale.
HOUSTON — The Texas Medical Center (TMC) is set to break ground on Phase I of TMC3, a $1.8 billion life sciences campus in Houston. The 37-acre TMC3 master plan, which will encompass approximately 6 million square feet of development, was designed by Boston-based Elkus Manfredi Architects. Groundbreaking is scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year. Phase I of the campus will include 950,000 square feet of space dedicated to research, anchored by a 700,000-square-foot facility developed by Beacon Capital Partners and strategic partner Braidwell; a 521-room hotel; 65,000 square feet of conference space; a 350-unit residential tower; over 2,000 parking spaces; and 18.7 acres of public space, including six parks designed by Mikyoung Kim Design. Upon full build-out, the development will also include six future industry and institutional research buildings and a mixed-use building with retail. The campus is expected to generate up to $5.4 billion in annual economic impact for the state of Texas, as well as 23,000 permanent jobs and 19,000 construction jobs. “It is an unprecedented time for life sciences and innovation in the U.S. and Houston has all the factors that are required for explosive growth in this space,” says Steve Purpura, president of …
WATERTOWN, MASS. — Two locally based firms, The Davis Cos. and Boston Development Group, have broken ground on a 224,000-square-foot life sciences project in the western Boston suburb of Watertown. Designed by Elkus Manfredi Architects, the project marks Phase I of a larger campus that will ultimately include 450,000 square feet of space across two buildings. The first building will offer six private tenant spaces and amenities such as a fitness center, bike storage room and retail/café space. Completion is slated for mid-2023.
ANN ARBOR, MICH. — Mag Mile Capital has arranged a $7 million loan for the refinancing of a 128,000-square-foot flex office property located at 600 S. Wagner Road in Ann Arbor. An entrepreneurial community occupies the building. Members include professionals from startups and established companies across sectors such as life sciences, drug discovery, medical devices, alternative energy mobility, robotics and business development. The property includes wet labs, offices, production areas, collaborative spaces, warehouse storage, coworking areas and conference rooms. A regional credit union provided the recourse loan at an interest rate of 3.75 percent.
AcquisitionsCompany NewsData CentersDistrict of ColumbiaIndustrialLife SciencesMarylandOfficeSoutheastTexasTop StoriesVirginia
PRP Sells Four Office Campuses for $1B, Makes $2B Commitment for Logistics and Data Center Acquisitions
by John Nelson
WASHINGTON, D.C. — PRP, a privately held real estate investment and management firm based in Washington, D.C., is making a sea change as it looks to bolster its logistics and data center portfolio and churn its office assets. The company is in the process of selling four office campuses in separate deals totaling more than $1 billion. At the same time, PRP is allocating $2 billion to acquire logistics facilities leased to credit-worthy companies in primary and secondary markets, as well as data centers and land zoned for future data centers. The specific locations of the assets were not disclosed. “The assets that we are acquiring are located in attractive markets backed by solid demographics, high barriers to entry and historically high industrial occupancy rates,” says Joe Neckles, managing director of net lease acquisitions at PRP. “The logistics and data center sectors remained highly resilient throughout the pandemic and continue to grow at rates well in excess of inflation.” The office assets that PRP is selling include Sequoia Plaza, a 370,000-square-foot campus spanning three buildings in Northern Virginia’s Arlington County. The property houses the headquarters of Arlington County’s Department of Human Services and the Arlington County Public School System. An …
It seems as though we have recently seen significant weekly announcements about investment and job creation by major U.S. companies into the Research Triangle Park region, the area situated between the cities of Raleigh and Durham. For instance, tech titans Apple and Google declared plans to establish major engineering hubs in the region, adding heat to an already dynamic market. It is common knowledge that the Triangle area is respected for its large, highly educated workforce thanks to top-ranking colleges and universities, including Duke University, North Carolina State University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Wake Tech, North Carolina’s largest community college, also serves as a vital engine, providing the region’s workforce with STEM candidates. These institutions supply existing and expanding businesses with an impressive talent pool. Theses factors, along with a business-friendly economic climate, have grown the Research Triangle into one of the nation’s largest research centers. Although local headlines continue to buzz with real estate business news, the Raleigh-Durham industrial market has witnessed steady real estate investments from life sciences and R&D businesses for decades. Over the past 24 months, however, demand for life sciences space has had a dramatic impact on traditional flex/light industrial users …
By Tim Harrison, Research Manager, JLL After one the strictest and longest shelter-in-place orders in the nation, Oregon is officially back open for business and all signs point to a strong recovery in Portland. People are travelling again, with airline passengers through Portland International Airport totaling more than 1 million in May. This represents about 63 percent of the normal 2019 monthly average, according to the Port of Portland’s aviation stats. Perhaps most importantly, people are returning to the downtown core for both business and pleasure with weekly visits through Pioneer Mall — the center of downtown — up to about 70 percent of 2019’s average weekly visits, per Placer.ai. This optimism is transferring to the office market, where Portland leasing activity is up more than 33 percent year over year. The recovery is being led by industries old and new. Out in the suburbs, Portland’s largest apparel companies are expanding on campus, while new leases were signed by Lululemon and On-Running in newer creative spaces on the urban fringe. Portland’s life sciences sector is approaching a critical mass as Bay Area company Twist Biosciences entered the market by absorbing 215,000 square feet. Meanwhile, Vancouver, Wash.-based AbSci raised more than …
NEW YORK CITY AND TORONTO — KKR, a global private equity firm based in New York City, has agreed to sell a national portfolio of warehouses and distribution centers to Oxford Properties Group, a real estate owner and manager based in Toronto. The $2.2 billion deal is expected to close in the coming months. The portfolio comprises 149 properties located across 12 major industrial U.S. markets, including the Inland Empire in California, Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, Chicago, Houston, Tampa, Orlando, San Diego and the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. corridor. Since 2018, KKR and its management platform Alpha Industrial Properties assembled and maintained the portfolio across 50 individual transactions. The firm’s decision to focus on high-barrier-to-entry sites near major population centers attracted the strong offer from Oxford Properties, which is looking to allocate one-third of its global equity in industrial real estate. “Growing our U.S. industrial business is one of Oxford’s highest-conviction global investment strategies as we continue to build, buy and invest in the physical infrastructure that serves the digital economy,” says Ankit Bhatt, vice president of investments at Oxford Properties and leader of the firm’s U.S. industrial investment strategy. ”High-quality, infill, consumption-driven industrial portfolios of scale trade infrequently, so this transaction is …