SALT LAKE CITY — VanTrust Real Estate has acquired the Salt Lake Lumber Building, located at 205 N. 400 West in downtown Salt Lake City. Terms of the transaction were not released. Originally built in 1909 as the Morrison-Merrill Lumber Co. office building, the three-story, 26,997-square-foot brick property features exposed heavy timber, brick and stone walls, maple flooring, a wood staircase, exposed wood ceilings and brick arches around the windows. VanTrust plans to convert the building into a contemporary office space and regional headquarters. Demolition and interior renovations are slated to start this summer, with delivery scheduled for early 2025.
SAN DIEGO — Dan Feder of F&F Properties has completed the sale of North Park Creative Office in San Diego to Mike Weston with Weston Legal PLLC for $2.7 million. Located at 4060 30th St., the 3,818-square-foot property was fully renovated in 2019. Renovations included high-end finishes, secured access, exposed beams, HVAC, eight private offices, a kitchen, conference room, game room, outdoor turf patios and a barbecue/fire pit. Nick Totah and Ross Sanchez of The Totah Group of Marcus & Millichap’s San Diego downtown office represented the seller and procured the buyer in the transaction.
By Brett Merz, senior vice president of asset management, KBS Texas was one of the first states to experience the return of employees to the office post-pandemic. That trend continues today. Even as work-from-home and hybrid work become further entrenched in some parts of the country, Texas still leads the nation in terms of employees coming into the office. According to Kastle’s Workplace Barometer, office properties in Dallas, Houston and Austin have occupancy rates during peak times that are 10 percent higher than the national average. Kastle’s data cuts across all building classes, but in our experience, mid-week occupancy at our Class A office properties in Texas is even stronger. Kastle’s data and our experience contrast with the negativity surrounding the office market and point to the potential for greater opportunity throughout 2024 and beyond. According to JLL’s local market office reports for major Texas cities, vacancy rate increases are slowing down. With new construction in Dallas and Austin trending down, as well as zero new construction in San Antonio and Houston, occupancy rates may begin to grow through the rest of the year. Additionally, rents for Class A buildings are either stable or have seen slight increases over the …
DUNWOODY, GA. — The Dunwoody City Council has approved the rezoning of Phase IV of Park Center, a 17-acre, transit-oriented office campus in metro Atlanta. The master developer of the project is KDC, a Dallas-based corporate development and investment firm. The amended zoning will allow KDC to change its plans from a standalone fourth office tower to a two-tower project that will comprise 175 hotel rooms, 300 residential units, 22,000 square feet of retail space and 300,000 square feet of office space. The plan includes two towers on a common podium with a 20-story apartment tower and a combined office and hotel tower, where six floors of hotel rooms will sit atop 12 levels of office space. Phase IV represents the final phase of Park Center and will occupy the last undeveloped portion of the development, which was originally conceived as a 2.2 million-square-foot East Coast hub for State Farm Insurance. The project team includes local architecture firm Cooper Carry. The current campus contains three office towers developed over the past 10 years: the 600,000-square-foot Park Center One, which is directly connected to the Dunwoody MARTA Station; the 621,000-square-foot Park Center Two with more than 39,000 square feet of retail …
ATLANTA — Flexible workspace provider WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy late last year, has completed its real estate restructuring in Atlanta, according to a press release from the company. The process, as in other cities, involved lease renegotiations with landlords. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that WeWork now plans to close five of its 11 Atlanta locations. In April, the company announced a new $450 million investment to support operations throughout its Chapter 11 proceedings. WeWork’s current portfolio includes more than 24 million square feet of space across 330 locations globally.
PHOENIX — Baker Development has received zoning approval for AZUL, a 72-acre project on the former ON Semiconductor site at 52nd Street and Loop 202 in Phoenix. The site is now zoned for a wide variety of commercial and industrial uses, including corporate headquarters, advanced manufacturing, logistics, hospitals, hyperscales and other quantum computing users. Demolition of the former semiconductor factory is underway and scheduled for completion by fourth-quarter 2024. AZUL plans to develop up to 2 million square feet of corporate campus space on the site.
NEWARK, N.J. — HAX, a tech concept backed by global venture capital firm SOSV that serves as an incubator for startup companies, has opened its 35,000-square-foot headquarters facility in Newark. The facility includes space for chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering labs, as well as 3D printing, manual metal fabrication, computer numerical control machining and laser cutting. More than 30 companies will operate from within the facility.
— By Kirsten Grado, Toss Vallentine and Wing Lee of JLL — The resilience of the South Bay/Silicon Valley economy has been tested with the dramatic change in hybrid work formats that enabled employees to work from anywhere. While office vacancy has hit near record levels over the past year, signs of strengthening fundamentals are pointing to a bottoming of the market and a period of opportunity for companies and investors with long-term views. So, what is marking the signs of optimism? Leasing activity has continued to improve as companies in technology, professional services, financial services/consulting and other sectors leased 865,000 square feet across 61 transactions in the first quarter of 2024. The largest leases were PwC agreeing to move from downtown San Jose into 141,000 square feet within the top three floors of One Santana West, as well as a confidential tech firm leasing 162,000 square feet at Coleman Highline, also in San Jose. Other notable leases were TDK InvenSense renewing its 82,000-square-foot space in San Jose, as well as KMPG and the 49ers organization each taking about 50,000 square feet of space in new leases in Santa Clara. Premier space remains in high demand as companies look to …
By Matt Hock, NAI Greywolf In the active landscape of Milwaukee’s commercial real estate market, several trends are reshaping the way businesses, both tenants and landlords, approach office spaces. From the enduring impact of remote work to the changing preferences of tenants, the market is currently witnessing a focus on quality, adaptability and talent retention. Flight to quality persists While the market continues to see the flight to quality we have experienced for the past few years, the Milwaukee office sector is now also experiencing what has been termed as “competing with the couch.” Companies are battling the challenge of bringing employees back to the office and with that they are looking to solve this issue with providing spaces that offer more than your standard office setup. Basically, they are looking for amenities and features within the office that entice workers to come back, compared with what remote workers have with their home office setup. So, competing with the comforts of home, or the couch, in these cases. This has catalyzed a “flight to quality,” where businesses are investing in premium office spaces designed to enhance the overall employee experience. In effort to attract and retain top talent, companies are …
DALLAS — Haus of Tre Li, an international home goods retailer, has signed a 16,549-square-foot office lease at 10100 N. Central Expressway in North Dallas. According to LoopNet Inc., the six-story building was constructed in 1983, renovated in 2009 and totals 94,294 square feet. Bennett Henke represented the landlord, Boxer Property Co., in the lease negotiations on an internal basis. The tenant was also self-represented.