LOS ANGELES — Brown & Riding Insurance Services has announced plans to move its Los Angeles office to the U.S. Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles. The firm signed a 10-year lease for a 13,043-square-foot space on the 20th floor. This marks the first lease signing since Silverstein Properties completed its $60 million capital improvement program for the tower. The renovation project, completed in May 2023, includes enhancements to more than 35,000 square feet of common areas, a redesigned entrance and lobby, contactless elevators and other amenities. Brown & Riding’s move is scheduled to take place in early 2024. David Kluth and Aliya Coher of Newmark represented the tenant in the lease transaction. Harlan Strader of Silverstein Properties and Jaclyn Ward, James Malone and Sarah Hancock of JLL represented the landlord.
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NATICK, MASS. — Locally based developer Stonegate Group has broken ground on Stonegate St. Patrick, an 89,500-square-foot, mixed-use redevelopment in Natick, a western suburb of Boston. Designed by Finegold Alexander Architects, the project will convert the site of a former school into a property with 46 apartments, four townhomes and 14,000 square feet of retail space. Apartments will come in one-, two- and three-bedroom formats, and 14 apartments will be reserved as affordable housing. Townhomes will feature three- and four-bedroom layouts. Nauset Construction is the general contractor for the project, a tentative completion date for which was not disclosed.
WYOMISSING, PA. — Progress Realty Partners, a New Jersey-based private equity firm, has acquired Park Place Center, a 143,000-square-foot industrial flex property in Wyomissing, located about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The site spans 11 acres, and the complex consists of 10 buildings ranging in size from 2,985 to 55,080 square feet. Affiliate firm Progress Capital arranged an acquisition loan for the deal that carried a 75 percent loan-to-value ratio and one year of interest-only payments. Alan Cafiero and Mark Gjonbalaj of Marcus & Millichap represented the undisclosed seller in the transaction.
DOVER, N.H. — The Washington Trust Co., a regional bank, has provided a $7.4 million acquisition loan for an 80,000-square-foot industrial property in Dover, located near the Maine-New Hampshire border. According to LoopNet Inc., the property at 44 Industrial Drive was constructed on 8.5 acres in 1971 and renovated in 1996. The facility was fully leased at the time of sale. The borrower was an affiliate of Massachusetts-based investment firm R.J. Kelly.
EDISON, N.J. — New Jersey-based Armstrong Logistics has signed an 86,936-square-foot industrial lease in the Northern New Jersey community of Edgewater. According to LoopNet Inc., the property at 250 Carter Drive was built on 36.4 acres in 1990, totals 408,860 square feet and offers a clear height of 27 feet. Scott Mertz of NAI Mertz represented the tenant in the lease negotiations. The name and representative of the landlord were not disclosed.
NEW BRITAIN, CONN. — Marcus & Millichap has arranged the sale of The Bleu, a 63-unit apartment complex in New Britain, located southwest of Hartford. Built in 1970, the complex offers studio to four-bedroom units with an average size of 905 square feet. Eric Pentore, Wes Klockner and Ross Friedel of Marcus & Millichap represented the seller, a limited liability company, in the deal and procured a New York-based investor as the buyer. Both parties requested anonymity.
By Taylor Williams Multifamily investment sales activity has been muted across major Texas markets during the first half of 2023, underscoring the unfortunate reality that even the most coveted asset classes are not immune to severe macroeconomic headwinds. Much like a year ago, the combined effects of stubborn inflation and corresponding interest rate hikes have wrought visibly negative changes to the world of multifamily investment sales. But in summer 2022, deals were still getting done at a decent clip; price disparities and depreciation were the most significant and obvious impediments to deal velocity. Today, buyers and sellers are more closely aligned on market realities as relates to price points, but many are simply not motivated to transact — at least in the short term. According to data from RealPage, in the first quarter of 2023, there were 337 multifamily transactions within the Dallas-Plano-Irving triangle, down from 510 in the first quarter of 2022. The greater Houston area saw 266 deals executed in the first quarter this year, a decline from 410 during that period in 2022, while the Austin market’s total number of transaction fell from 191 to 123 quarter-over-quarter. Multifamily sales prices responded differently to reduced deal volume from …
There’s no denying the office sector is undergoing a critical period marked by myriad challenges. The question is, how will it all turn out? Currently, the inventory of U.S. office space is 5.56 billion square feet — and will likely reach over 5.68 billion square feet by the end of the decade. But today’s “flexible” workforce will only require 4.61 billion square feet to accommodate its needs, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report titled “Obsolescence Equals Opportunity.” “The U.S. will end the decade with 1.1 billion square feet of vacant office space, 740 million square feet of which qualifies as normal or natural vacancy and 330 million square feet of which qualifies as excess vacancy attributable to remote and hybrid strategies,” the report states. “The overall level of vacancy will therefore be 55 percent higher than was observed prior to the pandemic.” Those numbers are jarring, but opportunists say the office sector just needs to evolve and adapt, much like the retail market has done. “Just as retail didn’t die in the years following the e-commerce boom, the office sector is not in danger of demise,” states the Cushman & Wakefield report. “Recognizing the challenges and opportunities head-on with …
BOSTON — Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. (NYSE: ARE) has sold 268,000 rentable square feet within 421 Park Drive, a 660,034-square-foot life sciences development to be built in Boston. An affiliate of Boston Children’s Hospital was the buyer. Upon completion, 421 Park Drive will be part of the larger Alexandria Center for Life Science-Fenway mega campus, which will total more than 2 million square feet at full build-out. The campus, developed in partnership with Samuels & Associates, boasts numerous amenities, proximity to both Cambridge and the Longwood Medical Area, and convenient transportation access. Alexandria will develop and operate 421 Park Drive, which will feature open space, direct connections to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Fenway station, bicycle and pedestrian paths, and retail space on the ground floor. The price of the portion sold to Boston Children’s Hospital is approximately $155 million, along with development fees to be earned by Alexandria over the next three years. Boston Children’s Hospital will continue to fund its pro rata share of the costs to develop 421 Park Drive. Vertical construction is scheduled to begin later this year and to be substantially completed in 2026. The transaction with Boston Children’s Hospital results in 48.5 …
SEATTLE — Amazon Web Services (AWS), a division of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) that offers on-demand cloud computing platforms to individuals, companies and governments, plans to make a big investment in Central Ohio. The company, along with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, announced the firm will invest approximately $7.8 billion to expand its data center operations in the region by the end of 2029. AWS is currently undertaking a site selection process across numerous localities in Central Ohio for the new data center campuses, the total number of facilities of which was not disclosed. Final site selections will be decided and announced at a later date. The move is expected to create 230 new jobs and an estimated 1,000 support jobs, according to J.P. Nauseef, president and CEO of JobsOhio, an economic development corporation based in Columbus. The AWS data center project represents the second-largest single private sector company investment in Ohio’s history, according to the governor’s office. The new data centers will contain computer servers, data storage drives, networking equipment and other forms of technology infrastructure used to power cloud computing. “Amazon is already one of the largest private-sector employers in Ohio, and the company’s continued growth …