NEW YORK CITY — Canela Media, a provider of Spanish language content, has signed an 8,066-square-foot office lease renewal and expansion at 370 Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Canela Media has occupied 4,924 square feet at the 26-story building since 2021 and is now taking additional space on the 15th floor. Brett Maslin and Jack Tobin of Adams & Co. represented the tenant in the lease negotiations. Gayle Kennedy and Olivia Schrantz of Broad Street Development represented the undisclosed landlord.
CHICAGO — Lactalis Heritage Dairy has expanded its office lease at 540 W. Madison St. in Chicago’s West Loop by an additional 13,000 square feet. The company, which manufactures and markets brands such as Kraft Natural Cheese, Knudsen, Breakstone’s and Cracker Barrel, now occupies 48,000 square feet at the building. Lactalis Heritage Dairy is part of Lactalis USA, which is under Lactalis Group, the world’s largest dairy company that is headquartered in France. By January 2024, the Chicago office of Lactalis expects to house 230 positions, representing more than 280 percent growth in positions since the office opened in late 2021. Lactalis is working with Savills on the lease agreement and office expansion.
CHICAGO — Law firm Gordon Rees Scully Masukhani (GRSM) has signed a 29,839-square-foot office lease at One North Wacker in Chicago. The company currently occupies 24,182 square feet at One North Franklin and plans to relocate in August 2024. Completed in 2002, One North Wacker is a 51-story, 1.4 million-square-foot office tower in the city’s West Loop. In December, ownership will launch a refresh of the building’s amenity floor. Tenants will enjoy an expanded lounge with private work/phone rooms, new meeting and event spaces, a state-of-the-art fitness center and a new craft coffee bar. Completion is slated for summer 2024. Dougal Jeppe of Colliers represented the tenant, while Maggy Brophy of Irvine Co. represented the owner on an internal basis.
Like many regional peer cities, there is a clear bifurcation between office leasing activity in Louisville’s downtown and suburban office markets. Downtown Louisville has been slower to recover from the double gut-punch of the COVID-19 pandemic and local social unrest that kept workers away from the office in 2020, with overall vacancy stubbornly exceeding 20 percent for most of this year. Much of the vacancy has been driven by health insurer Humana, by far the largest office occupier in downtown Louisville, which has let several large Class B office leases expire as it continues to consolidate its workforce into properties the company owns. Year-to-date, downtown leasing activity totals 115,000 square feet, which is up 58 percent compared to this time last year, while overall absorption has swung sharply lower at negative 237,000 square feet. The relative oversupply of available office space has created a very “tenant-friendly” dynamic downtown, with landlords becoming increasingly aggressive to court leasing activity. More so than their suburban counterparts, downtown landlords are offering outsized incentive packages to tenants, including rental concessions, turnkey construction delivery of new tenant space, termination options and rental abatement periods that in some cases extend beyond one year. In exchange, downtown tenants …
KANSAS CITY, MO. — Academy Bank has moved into its new headquarters at 1201 Walnut in downtown Kansas City. The bank occupies three contiguous floors of the building, which is owned by Copaken Brooks. Later this year, Academy Bank will open a retail banking center in the lobby of the building. Academy Bank is a full-service commercial and retail bank headquartered in Kansas City with more than 70 banking centers across Missouri, Kansas, Colorado and Arizona. Bryan Johnson of Colliers represented the tenant, while Jon Copaken represented the landlord on an internal basis. Rising 29 stories, 1201 Walnut features an attached parking garage and access to the amenities of 1111 Main.
CHICAGO — The Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago (BOMA/Chicago) has selected 190 S. LaSalle St. for its new headquarters. The organization signed a 6,257-square-foot lease. The relocation was precipitated by the sale of 115 N. LaSalle St., BOMA’s current home, to the State of Illinois last year. BOMA expects to take occupancy of its new office in February. MRSA Architects is the architect for the build-out of the space.
NEW YORK CITY — Energy Capital Partners (ECP) has signed a 26,292-square-foot office lease expansion at One World Trade Center, a 3.1 million-square-foot tower in Lower Manhattan. David Falk, Peter Shimkin, Hal Stein, Jason Greenstein and Nathan Kropp of Newmark represented ECP, which is taking an additional 15,400 square feet, in the lease negotiations. Newmark’s Eric Zemachson and Corey Borg, along with internal agents Eric Engelhardt and Karen Rose, represented the landlord, a partnership between The Durst Organization and The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. — PREG Scottsdale LLC, a company formed by a private individual investor, has acquired Scottsdale Northsight, a Class A multi-tenant office building in Scottsdale. MIREF Northsight LLC sold the asset for $26.5 million. Located at 14350 N. 87th St., the three-story property features 138,693 square feet of office space. At the time of sale, the building was 69 percent leased. The asset offers suites ranging in size between 2,000 square feet and 8,000 square feet. Chris Toci, Eric Wichterman and Mike Coover of Cushman & Wakefield’s Capital Market and Private Capital Group teams in Phoenix represented the seller in the transaction.
— By Julian Freeman, Dave Wensley and Gabe Pitassi — With steep vacancy rates impacting traditional office markets due to the headwinds of higher interest rates, short-term economic uncertainty and long-term remote/hybrid work uncertainties, underutilized traditional office buildings may become liabilities before the end of their anticipated economic life. Owners of these properties may consider a conversion — an adaptive reuse or repurposing — to access higher rents and occupancy rates. In view of nationwide housing shortages, especially in California, converting office to multifamily has received much attention as a logical move. However, such a conversion is not always viable from a financial, structural, legal or location perspective. An alternative option may be to repurpose an office building for life sciences use. Such a conversion, while posing its own unique challenges, may provide more realistic options than a conversion to residential use for many owners and properties. Challenges in converting to residential Converting an office building to residential use presents challenges on multiple fronts. Zoning laws vary based on property location and usage, and the property may need to be rezoned to a different classification to allow multifamily uses. Rezoning requires local government approval and public hearings, which can take months …
DULUTH, GA. — Banyan Street Capital has signed 109,963 square feet of office leases at Satellite Place, a 117-acre office park in Duluth, a northeast suburb of Atlanta. The 21 transactions include 13 new leases or expansions totaling 89,926 square feet and six renewals totaling 20,037 square feet. Eight of the leases (for 46,527 square feet) are tied to the electric vehicle (EV) industry, including a 17,808-square-foot lease with Hyundai Glovis. Situated near I-85, Satellite Place comprises 820,000 square feet of six-story office space. Banyan Street Capital has recently partnered with Greystar for a 328-unit multifamily development underway at Satellite Place. The property, known as Elan Satellite Place, is expected to deliver in early 2025.