PROVO, UTAH — Money360 has provided an $18 million bridge loan for the refinancing of an office property in Provo. The non-recourse loan features a 24-month term and a 75 percent loan-to-value ratio. Further details were not disclosed.
LAS VEGAS — As president and CEO of asset services at The Woodmont Company — which manages about 18.5 million square feet of retail centers, enclosed regional malls and outlet centers almost exclusively on a third-party basis — Fred Meno has had a front-row seat to the store closures and retail repurposing projects that have defined the market in the e-commerce era. Meno, whose company is based in Fort Worth, specializes in work that has afforded him the opportunity to see the big picture, to grasp the most in-depth reasons behind why certain retail categories are failing and why others are thriving. In some cases, that’s a factor of what types of retail uses are featured in certain types of properties. In others, it’s a matter of the retailer entering into a highly leveraged buyout deal to appease shareholders and gain additional time to right-size its stores and reshape its strategy. Sometimes it’s a simple matter of not adapting quickly enough to game-changing technology that can take the industry by storm. REBusinessonline.com sat down with Meno last week in Las Vegas during RECon, which attracted more than 30,000 retail real estate professionals, to pick his brain on what the future …
NEW YORK CITY — Savanna, a real estate owner and developer based in New York City, has purchased a 39-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan for $381 million. The nearly 500,000-square-foot building is located at 521 Fifth Ave., which is near the corner of 43rd Street and one block from Grand Central Station in New York City. The seller is a joint venture between SL Green Realty Corp., Quantum Global Real Estate and LaSalle Investment Management. Bill Shanahan, Darcy Stacom, David Fowler and Doug Middleton of CBRE represented the joint venture in the sale. Built in 1929, the office tower is LEED Gold-certified and Energy Star-rated, but Savanna plans to make significant capital improvements to the asset. More specifically, the renovation includes a complete entrance and lobby overhaul, new signage, selective systems upgrades and common corridor work. “After we make a few select cosmetic improvements, we believe this property will be well-positioned for a successful leasing campaign,” says Andrew Fichte, managing director of Savanna. Savanna has selected a CBRE team led by Peter Turchin and David Hollander as the leasing agent for the office tower. At year-end 2018, the build was more than 96 percent leased to tenants including China …
If you want to understand the state of Texas’ retail market as of the first quarter of 2019, just look at the numbers. In terms of jobs, Texas is on track to add 191,000 net new jobs this year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Much of that growth will be in our major metro markets of Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Houston and San Antonio. In Austin, for example, unemployment stood at an extremely low 2.7 percent as of March 2019. DFW’s rate is a healthy 3.3 percent; Houston’s is 3.7 percent and San Antonio’s is 3.1 percent. All of these rates are considered strong. Population growth is a big driver of retail demand and in terms of this metric, all of our major Texas metros are national leaders. The country has only 11 cities with 1 million people or more within city limits. Three of those — Dallas, Houston and San Antonio — are in Texas. And by 2020, Austin is on track to be the fourth. This healthy job and population growth are big drivers for our retail markets. Plus, near-record-low development at a time of steady demand is driving expanding concepts to lease in existing …
Thirty years ago, there were 33 operating textile mills in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Today, there are scarcely a handful. The jobs and investments disappeared in the wake of regulatory change and international trade agreements. However, the infrastructure, location, existing workforce and entrepreneurial attitude of the area’s leadership saw this as a challenge to evolve. And evolve it did — using the substrate of the textile industry as a solid foundation. The well-trained and manufacturing-oriented workforce, coupled with the existing manufacturing support base (specialty machinery fabrication including maintenance and constituent chemical suppliers), were readily adaptable to new and recast job opportunities. This was the canvas on which the area’s evolution would be painted. Specialty equipment, manufacturing, fabrication, chemical production and other vestiges of the textile industry have remained demand drivers for the Upstate market. They have been reconfigured in the form of investment and expansion by Milliken & Co., Toray Carbon Fiber, General Electric and Keurig Green Mountain. The existing manufacturing-oriented workforce, with its previous experience and mindset, were a prime reason BMW selected Spartanburg County as the home for its first North America production facility. BMW’s Plant Spartanburg and its vast supplier and related support network have emerged as …
SAVANNAH, GA. — Premier Design + Build Group has broken ground on a 285,527-square-foot cold-storage facility for Frozen Assets Cold Storage in Savannah. The facility is expected to be complete in spring 2020 and will offer warehouse storage with 50-foot clear ceiling heights, a 19,518-square-foot blast freezer, two freezer rooms, boxing room, and an ammonia refrigeration system that will allow the freezers to maintain temperatures between 38 and minus-10 degrees. The building’s exterior will feature 39 truck doors, 54 trailer positions, 68 parking stalls and a drive-in door. The property is situated on 20 acres at 2375 Tremont Road, six miles south of the Port of Savannah. Samantha Skopek of Premier will oversee the design and construction. Harris Architects Inc. is providing architectural services, Swift Structural Design LLC is providing structural engineering services and Thomas & Hutton is providing civil engineering and landscape architecture services for the project. This is the first project for Premier in the state of Georgia.
ATLANTA — Middleburg has purchased three workforce housing properties in Atlanta. The assets include The Grove, a 220-unit community located at 5100 Welcome All Road; Park at Bouldercrest, a 438-unit complex situated at 26 Bouldercrest Lane SE; and Majestic Park, a 298-unit property located at 1991 Delowe Drive SW. The Grove and Park at Bouldercrest were vacant, and Majestic Park was 15 percent occupied at the time of the sale. Middleburg is planning to renovate all three properties to improve physical assets and communal amenities.In addition, Middleburg will also rebrand the properties, with The Grove becoming Vesta Red Oak, Park at Bouldercrest becoming Vesta Bouldercrest and Majestic Park becoming Vesta Adams Park. The acquisition and renovations of all three properties are estimated to cost $91 million. Middleburg will provide responsive community programs to its residents and engage the local community through job fairs, afterschool programs and continuing education for adults. Acquisition financing was provided through Middleburg Workforce Housing Fund, a fund that was created in January and is now closed following this transaction. Middleburg also acquired Vesta Derby Oaks in Louisville, Ky., through the fund. Middleburg has partnered with KeyBank Real Estate Capital Community Development Lending and Investment (CDLI) and …
WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. — KBS Real Estate Investment has sold Emerald View at Vista Center, a two-building office property in West Palm Beach, for $40 million. A partnership including Vanderbilt Office Properties acquired the 139,471-square-foot property. Emerald View is situated near the Florida Turnpike and Okeechobee Boulevard within the 500-acre master-planned Vista Center. Vista Center is a mixed-use development that will include office, industrial, hotel and retail space. Emerald View was built to exceed hurricane requirements and provide 100 percent power for 25 days of “business as usual” operations. KBS made several upgrades and improvements to the property, including the construction of move-in ready speculative suites and enhancements to the building common areas and lobby. Christian Lee, Jose Lobon, Kevin Probel, Kevin McCarthy and Tyler Ploshnick of CBRE represented KBS in the transaction.
TAMPA, FLA. — RS Tampa Industrial LLC, an affiliate of Redstone Investments, has acquired the Roth portfolio, a 17-building industrial portfolio that spans 466,460 square feet in Tampa’s Airport/North and East Tampa submarkets. Roth Investment Partnership sold the buildings for a total of $28.6 million. Included in the sale is a building situated at 4410 Crest Ave. which is adjacent to Air Cargo Road and Tampa International Airport. Six of the buildings are situated within Sunstate Industrial Park, which, according to a person familiar with the property, is located near Tampa International Airport’s cargo entrance.
ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. — Marcus & Millichap has arranged the $10.7 million sale of Serenity Creek, a 90-unit apartment community in St. Petersburg. Serenity Creek is located at 4201 49th St., 20 miles southwest of downtown Tampa. The property was built in 1980 and was renovated in 2007. Serenity Creek offers one- and two-bedroom floor plans across seven two-story buildings. Community amenities include a swimming pool with sundeck, multiple outdoor lounge areas with fire pits and barbecue grilling areas, a central clubhouse, mail kiosk and leasing center and an on-site laundry center. Casey Babb, Luis Baez and Shawn Rupp of Marcus & Millichap represented the undisclosed seller and undisclosed buyer in the transaction.