NEW YORK CITY — Tri State Commercial has secured a 3,600-square-foot office lease in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Home care company Care Skills Home will occupy space on the third floor of an office building located at 1125 Fulton St. on a five-year lease beginning in March. Avi Akiva led a Tri State team that represented Care Skills Home in the lease negotiations. Akiva also represented the landlord, The Bawabeh Group.
At this point, it sounds like the movie “Groundhog Day,” but 2019 was another impressive year of growth and success for the greater Boston life sciences real estate market — and that growth shows no signs of subsiding any time soon. Duncan Gratton, Cushman & Wakefield Strong levels of venture capital investment, big pharmaceutical partnerships and merger and acquisition activity continued to fuel unprecedented demand for life sciences space, not only in and around Cambridge but also in submarkets like the Seaport, Watertown and certain Route 128 corridors. Venture capital (VC) funding for life sciences, while not quite at 2018 levels, remained robust with nearly $6 billion invested through the end of November. Major funding deals that closed in 2019 include Ginkgo Bioworks ($290 million), ElevateBio ($150 million) and Beam Therapeutics Inc. ($135 million), which all committed to leasing lab space in existing buildings and new developments throughout the area. Supply-Demand Balance The urban Massachusetts life sciences market, which includes Boston, Cambridge, and the inner suburbs of Watertown, Lexington, Medford and Waltham, now enjoys an inventory of about 20 million square feet and ended 2019 with a vacancy rate of just over 4 percent. Successful speculative developments at Arsenal Yards …
WILLIAMSON COUNTY, TENN. — Spirit Airlines will move its Operations Control Center from Miramar, Fla., to Middle Tennessee’s Williamson County, just south of Nashville. The airlines company is expected to invest $11.3 million in a new facility and relocate 240 jobs from Florida while creating 100 jobs over the next five years. The Operations Control Center serves as the company’s 24/7, mission-critical operations function that directs operational control over all Spirit flights. It includes functions such as flight dispatch, crew scheduling, maintenance control, aircraft routing, air traffic control coordination and guest solutions. Spirit also announced it is planning to double its Airbus fleet to 300 aircraft by 2025. The move comes due to recent hurricanes that hit South Florida, causing Spirit to temporarily relocate its Operations Control Center. Despite this, Spirit recently released plans about its headquarters in Dania Beach, Fla.
ATLANTA — Ready Capital has closed a $26.9 million acquisition loan for a 216,000-square-foot office building in Atlanta’s Cumberland/Galleria submarket. The undisclosed borrower plans to make various upgrades to the property including new elevators, conference rooms and a café. The three-year, non-recourse loan offers a floating interest rate and flexible prepayment options. Further details of the property were not disclosed.
JACKSONVILLE, FLA. — NAI Hallmark has brokered the $12.4 million sale of Baymeadows Business Center, a two-building, 132,102-square-foot office and industrial campus in Jacksonville. The property was 87 percent leased at the time of sale to tenants including UPS, ADP and Breakthru Beverage Group. The buyer, Miami-based Adler Real Estate Partners, has retained NAI Hallmark to provide leasing and management services at the property. Baymeadows Business Center is situated at 8226 Philips Highway, 11 miles south of downtown Jacksonville. Keith Goldfaden and Daniel Burkhardt of NAI Hallmark, along with David Ellis and Alex Waddey of NAI Global, represented the seller, Woodside Capital Partners, in the transaction.
CHICAGO — Skender has completed the interior construction of the 85,000-square-foot headquarters for AbelsonTaylor within the 2.8 million-square-foot Old Post Office project in Chicago. AbelsonTaylor is a Chicago-based health and wellness advertising agency. The company will occupy the entire sixth floor of the north building and a portion of the fifth floor of the south building. The new space features private offices, open-office workstations, open collaboration areas, conferencing areas, two cafés, photography rooms and storage rooms. The floors are separated by a few staircases, essentially functioning as a single office space. Serving as general contractor, Skender worked in conjunction with HED, Syska Hennessy Group and Cushman & Wakefield. Skender is currently the contractor for nearly 600,000 square feet of office space under development at the Old Post Office, including projects for Walgreens and PepsiCo.
NORTHLAKE, TEXAS — Henry S. Miller Brokerage has arranged the sale of a 14,023-square-foot office and warehouse property located at 4325 Dale Earnhardt Way in Northlake, a suburb of Fort Worth. The property was built on four acres in 2016. Chad Montgomery and Dan Spika of Henry S. Miller represented the buyer, investor Bruce Long, in the transaction. Chuck Horton of The Michael Group Real Estate represented the seller, 13415 Cleveland Gibbs LLC.
NEW YORK CITY — Newmark Knight Frank (NKF) has negotiated a 52,412-square-foot office lease renewal for quantitative trading firm Susquehanna International Group LLP in the Financial District of Manhattan. The firm will occupy the entire 47th and 48th floors of 140 Broadway, a 1.2 million-square-foot office building, on a 16-year lease. Brian Goldman and Ross Perlman of NKF represented the tenant in the lease negotiations. Robert Constable of Cushman & Wakefield represented the building owner, a partnership of 140 BW LLC and German investment firm Union Investment Real Estate GmbH.
NEW YORK CITY — Education technology company App Academy has signed a 12,602-square-foot office lease in Midtown Manhattan. The company will occupy the entire second floor of 90 Fifth Avenue, a 140,000-square-foot office building near Union Square Park. The company is moving from its previous space at 22 West 38th St. A.J. Camhi and Ryan Silverman represented the building owner, RFR Realty, in the lease negotiations on an internal basis.
SEATTLE — Digital Realty, a global provider of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, has reached an agreement with Clise Properties to purchase 49 percent ownership interest in the Westin Building Exchange in Seattle. Terms of the transaction were not released. The Westin Building Exchange serves as an interconnection hub for the Pacific Northwest, linking Canada, Alaska and Asia along the Pacific Rim. The 34-story tower is home to global cloud, content and interconnection providers, housing more than 150 carriers and over 10,000 cross-connects. The property is adjacent to Amazon’s 4.1 million-square-foot urban campus and overlooks Elliott Bay, as well as the downtown Seattle skyline. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the first half of 2020. Upon closing, Digital Realty will assume management and operational oversight for the facility.