CHICAGO — Industrious will open a 52,000-square-foot flexible office space at Willis Tower in Chicago. Scheduled to open in phases in the first quarter of 2021, the space is now available for lease. It is the latest of more than 100 locations for Industrious. EQ Office, owner of Willis Tower, says the management agreement with Industrious is an opportunity to roll out new flexible layouts and office configurations as well as updated common areas that reflect health and safety standards. The 110-story Willis Tower is currently in the midst of a $500 million renovation project. The revamped office tower will include 125,000 square feet of amenities exclusive to tenants, a 30,000-square-foot outdoor terrace and a 300,000-square-foot retail and dining destination known as Catalog.
WAUWATOSA, WIS. — Software company Dematic has opened a 37,330-square-foot office at The Mayfair Collection in Wauwatosa, a suburb of Milwaukee. PREMIER Design + Build Group built out the 27,200 square feet on the first floor and added another 10,130 square feet by constructing a mezzanine level. The space can accommodate up to 200 employees and features seven conference rooms. TOA Architecture/Urban Design provided architectural and interior design services. Dematic is a logistics technology services firm that specializes in supply chain optimization. HSA Commercial is the owner and developer for The Mayfair Collection, a mixed-use project comprising residential, retail and office space.
SECAUCUS, N.J. — JLL has negotiated two office leases totaling 95,000 square feet at 500 Plaza Drive in the New York City metro of Secaucus. Hartz Mountain Industries signed a new lease for 54,000 square feet, and AXA Equitable Life Insurance Co. renewed its lease for 41,000 square feet at the Class A building. David Stifelman and Timothy Greiner of JLL represented the landlord, Manulife Investment Management, in both lease negotiations. Geoffrey Schubert of CBRE represented Hartz Mountain Industries, and Matthew Astrachan of JLL represented AXA Equitable Life Insurance. The 11-story, 461,525-square-foot building is located within the 200-acre Harmon Meadow development at the junction of the New Jersey Turnpike and State Route 3.
SAN FRANCISCO — Columbia Property Trust and Allianz Real Estate have completed the formation of a joint venture to recapitalize 221 Main Street, a LEED Platinum- and Energy Star-certified office building in San Francisco’s South Financial District. Allianz contributed $180 million in cash for a 45 percent ownership in the joint venture, which values 221 Main Street at $400 million. Columbia will retain a 55 percent ownership stake in the property, function as general partner for the venture and continue to oversee day-to-day operations of the asset. Acquired by Columbia in 2014, 221 Main Street features 381,000 square feet of office space, Bay views and abundant outdoor space. The property is fully leased, primarily to tech tenants such as DocuSign and Prosper Marketplace. With this transaction, Columbia and Allianz now own five properties as joint venture partners. The joint venture portfolio has a collective gross asset value of $2.3 billion.
PLANO, TEXAS — Cushman & Wakefield has negotiated a 104,841-square-foot office lease at Legacy Union One, a 318,852-square-foot building in Plano. The tenant, energy exploration firm Denbury Inc., has subleased three floors from Prosperity Bank and one floor from Aimbridge Hospitality to house its new headquarters. About 300 Denbury employees will work in the new office space, which offers direct access to the Shops at Legacy and the Legacy West corporate campuses. Mike Wyatt, Travis Boothe and Maureen Kelly Cooper of Cushman & Wakefield represented Denbury in the lease negotiations.
MILWAUKEE — An affiliate of fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty LLC, in partnership with Harrison Street, has acquired Milwaukee’s historic Wells Building. The purchase price was $7.25 million, according to the Milwaukee Business Journal. The 15-story, 165,000-square-foot building is located at 324 E. Wisconsin Ave. and dates back to 1901. The property has a long history as a communications center and once served as the Milwaukee headquarters for Western Union Telegraph Co. Today, the building serves as a carrier hotel and data center. A carrier hotel is a building in a downtown location that houses networks and cloud services. The buyer plans to make significant investments in the building’s power and cooling infrastructure. Ascendant Holdings LLC, a Wisconsin-based commercial real estate development and investment company, was the seller.
Just a few months after getting hammered by a pandemic-induced recession, the U.S. economy is rebounding faster than anticipated, according to Mark Vitner, managing director and senior economist with Well Fargo Securities. During his keynote address to kick off the 11th annual InterFace Carolinas conference on Oct. 1, Vitner said the consensus estimate suggests U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at annualized rate of 30 percent in the third quarter. The Bureau of Economic Analysis will officially unveil its first estimate for third-quarter GDP on Thursday, Oct. 29. If realized, the gain would nearly offset the 31.4 percent decline in GDP in the second quarter. “This recession is the worst we’ve ever seen in terms of job loss and declines in GDP, but it was the shortest we’ve ever seen,” said Vitner. “All the decline we saw was in the second half of March and the first half of April. Since April 15 we’ve been recovering.” Employers added 661,000 jobs to the U.S. economy in September, which was nearly 200,000 jobs below the expectations of economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. Still, the economy has recovered 11.4 million of the 22 million jobs lost since the beginning of …
LOS ANGELES — JLL Capital Markets has arranged $48.7 million in construction financing for Exposition 3, a creative office property located in Los Angeles’ West Adams submarket. Paul Brindley, Jeff Sause and Spencer Richley of JLL secured the three-year, floating-rate loan through HIG Realty Partners on behalf of the borrower, The Luzzatto Co. Slated for delivery in 2022, Exposition 3 is fully preleased on a long-term basis to an undisclosed company for use as its new headquarters. The property previously served as an industrial property, and Luzzatto is renovating the asset into a two-building, 94,082-square-foot creative office space.
WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CALIF. — PSRS has arranged $7.1 million in refinancing for Promenade Office Park, a multi-tenant office building located in Westlake Village. The building features 74,000 square feet of office space. Grady Seldin of PSRS secured the financing through a life insurance company for the undisclosed borrower.
AUSTIN, TEXAS — The Austin office market closed the third quarter with a total vacancy rate of 14.3 percent, up 360 basis points from 10.7 percent at year-end 2019, according to a new report from CBRE. The market saw approximately 371,000 square feet of negative net absorption during the third quarter, fueled largely by vacated sublease space, and has now posted about 625,000 square feet of negative absorption for the year. While the bulk of the market’s negative absorption was concentrated in the CBD, some submarkets performed well, including the Southwest, which posted about 204,000 square feet of positive absorption. According to the report, roughly 400,000 square feet of sublease space was added to the supply between the second and third quarters, yielding a total of 1.6 million square feet of vacant sublease space. While vacancy is down relative to the second quarter of 2020, the report also noted that there are some 29 office projects totaling 6.1 million square feet under construction, suggesting that it may take some additional time for occupancy to return to pre-COVID levels even if absorption turns the corner into positive territory.