AUSTIN, TEXAS — Harmony Public Schools has signed a 7,211-square-foot office lease extension in northwest Austin. The academic administrator will continue to occupy space at Building G at Amber Oaks, a 10-building park located along I-45. Patrick Ley and Jason Steinberg of Equitable Commercial Realty represented the undisclosed landlord in the lease negotiations. Nick Boyd of Nick Boyd Real Estate represented the tenant.
NEW YORK CITY — Investment banking advisory firm Evercore has signed a 95,000-square-foot office lease expansion at Park Avenue Plaza, a 45-story, 1.2 million-square-foot building in Midtown Manhattan. Evercore’s additional space is located across floors 39 through 41, and the company now occupies about 500,000 square feet total at Park Avenue Plaza. Alan Desino of Colliers represented Evercore in the lease negotiations. Marc Packman, Charles Laginestra, Clark Briffel and Josh Fisher represented the landlord, Fisher Brothers, on an internal basis.
KANSAS CITY, MO. — Academy Bank, a full-service community bank and family-owned subsidiary of Dickinson Financial Corp., has opened a new retail branch within the lobby of 1201 Walnut, a 29-story office tower owned by Copaken Brooks in downtown Kansas City. The bank also moved its corporate headquarters to three contiguous floors of the building totaling roughly 50,000 square feet. Additionally, the property now features Academy Bank signage. Of Academy Bank’s 71 branches, 23 are located throughout metro Kansas City. Sister bank Armed Forces Bank will maintain its headquarters in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
DEARBORN, MICH. — Syndicated Equities has acquired Carhartt’s corporate headquarters and global design facility in Dearborn for an undisclosed price. The property, which is located at 5750 Mercury Drive, rises two stories and totals 58,722 square feet. The building is situated across the street from Ford’s global headquarters. Carhartt uses the facility for selecting fabrics and designs for new apparel. Syndicated acquired the property in a Delaware Statutory Trust ownership structure to accommodate investors completing 1031 exchanges along with accredited individual investors.
GERMANTOWN, MD. — Bethesda, Md.-based Rock Creek Property Group has delivered two life science facilities at 20430 and 20440 Century Blvd. in Germantown, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Situated off I-270 in Rock Creek’s Precision Labs campus, the former office buildings span 32,000 and 52,000 square feet, respectively. Architectural firm Ware Malcomb designed the office-to-life sciences conversion project, which involved upgrading the buildings’ electrical, mechanical and wastewater infrastructure. The single-story facility at 20430 Century Blvd. features move-in ready space suitable for a single headquarters and includes offices and flexible space for laboratory, research-and-development and cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practice) manufacturing. The two-story facility at 20440 Century Blvd. features six wet laboratory suites.
FULTON, MD. — A joint venture between St. John Properties Inc. and Greenebaum Enterprises has purchased a 12.5-acre site within Montpelier Research Park, a business park in the Baltimore-Washington submarket of Howard County. The duo plan to develop two single-story, flex industrial facilities on the site spanning 70,000 square feet combined. Located adjacent to Maple Lawn and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Fulton, the acquired site currently features a 32,488-square-foot office building that the new ownership is marketing for lease. Abby Glassberg and Don Schline of KLNB represented the seller in the land transaction. St. John and Greenebaum estimate they’ll deliver the two industrial facilities in 2026.
OKLAHOMA CITY — BancFirst has completed the renovation of its namesake tower in downtown Oklahoma City. Located at 1000 N. Broadway, BancFirst Tower is a 36-story, 507,038-square-foot building that was originally constructed in 1971. Renovations included modernizing the exterior public plaza and amenity spaces, including the lobby and underground concourse. Bockus Payne served as the architect of the project, which began in 2020. Other project partners included Wallace Engineering, Alvine Engineering and Smith Roberts Baldischwiler.
HOUSTON — Coworking and flexible workspace provider The Cannon will open a 21,960-square-foot space in Houston’s 265-acre Memorial City District. The space will span a full floor within Two Memorial City Plaza, which is part MetroNational’s three-building complex that recently received $30 million in capital improvements. Slated to open this spring, the space will feature 38 private offices and will be able to support more than 60 members.
BOSTON — M&T Bank has signed a 39,000-square-foot office lease at Winthrop Center, an 812,000-square-foot mixed-use complex in downtown Boston. George O’Connor and Thomas Ashe of Cushman & Wakefield represented M&T Bank, which plans to move in this fall, in the lease negotiations. CBRE represented the landlord, New York City-based Millennium Partners. Other tenants at Winthrop Center include Deloitte, McKinsey & Company and ECG Management Consultants.
— By Robert Ritschel and Andrew Herron, Senior Vice Presidents, The Saywitz Company — The industrial sector for Orange County commercial real estate continues to be one of the strongest in the country. Vacancy rates in Orange County for industrial space remain at approximately 2 percent. What this means for tenants out in the marketplace is a continued struggle to find viable space. When combining limited availability with the fact that some of the buildings are older or obsolete, or may have lower ceiling height or reduced power, this makes the challenge even more difficult. With that said, we have seen the sales prices for industrial space level off and we have also now, for the first time in the past several years, begun to see landlords offer free rent and move-in concessions, and come off of their asking prices. The days of five or 10 different tenants looking at one available space in the marketplace seem to be over, and those with good credit looking to sign long-term leases clearly stand out from the mom-and-pop operator that may be looking to sign a short-term lease. Landlords on the industrial side appear to be much more conscious of the changing …