LARGO, FLA. — Dockside Investors VII will break ground this month on The Boulevard, an upscale, mid-rise apartment community in Largo, part of the Tampa Bay metro area. The property will be comprised of 260 units in one- to three-bedroom floorplans. The Boulevard’s amenity offerings will include a wellness center, yoga studio, resort-style outdoor pool, indoor lap pool, pet park, resident services gallery, concierge services and a gaming room. Balfour Beatty Communities has been awarded the management contract for the property. Balfour Beatty expects to begin pre-leasing the property in November with the apartments ready for move-in by spring 2015.
Southeast
CONYERS, GA. — Cushman & Wakefield has brokered the sale of the Hillphoenix Global Warehouse, a 500,000-square-foot build-to-suit industrial facility at 2016 Gees Mill Road in Conyers, part of Atlanta’s 1-20 East industrial submarket. The property features 33-foot clear heights, cross-dock design, T-8 lighting, LED wall packs/pole lights and ESFR fire protection. Hillphoenix fully leases the property and recently signed a new 15-year lease at the facility, which serves as its global headquarters. New York-based Ladder Capital purchased the property from Ashley Capital for an undisclosed amount. Stewart Calhoun, David Meline, Samir Idris and Casey Masters of Cushman & Wakefield’s Atlanta office represented Ashley Capital in the transaction.
MIAMI LAKES, FLA. — Easton & Associates has arranged the sale of a 106,000-square-foot industrial property located at 5960 Miami Lakes Drive in the Miami Lakes Industrial Park. Safari Topia, a toy and figurine manufacturer, purchased the facility from 3B Associates, a real estate investment partnership. Tom Kimen of Easton & Associates represented 3B in the transaction.
ATLANTA — Cousins Properties has inked a two-floor, 51,066-square-foot lease with Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP (DHG) at One Ninety One Peachtree Tower in Atlanta. The CPA firm will move into its space on the 27th and 28th floors of the tower in early 2015. The new space will house DHG’s nearly 175 employees with room available for expansion. DHG has resided in downtown Atlanta’s Peachtree Center for nearly 30 years prior to its new lease agreement with Cousins.
ELIZABETHTOWN, KY. — GBT Realty Corp. has purchased more than 13 acres in Elizabethtown to develop Woodland Commons, a $20 million community retail center. The 126,000-square-foot project is currently 90 percent pre-leased to anchors Hobby Lobby and Academy Sports + Outdoors, which each occupy 60,000 square feet. Site work on the project is nearly 50 percent complete with vertical construction set to begin in October. GBT purchased the land at the intersection of Ring Road and Woodland Drive from Woodland Partnership for an undisclosed amount. GBT expects to deliver the property by spring 2015. The development team includes Haines Gipson and Associates Engineers, MJM Architects, Kelsey Construction and TD Farrell Construction.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Akridge and Mitsui Fudosan America Inc. (MFA) have delivered a 170,000-square-foot office building located at 1200 17th St. in Washington, D.C.’s Golden Triangle Business Improvement District. The asset is designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification with water-saving fixtures, low-emitting materials, ventilation and abundant daylight with floor-to-ceiling windows. The property also features a 2,500-square-foot fitness center and a client-only rooftop space. Akridge is providing property management services for the trophy office building, which currently has 80,000 square feet of office space available.
ATLANTA — Houlihan-Parnes Realtors LLC has closed a $34 million loan for The Preserve at Legacy Park, a 498-unit apartment community in Atlanta. Built in 2001, the asset was 98 percent occupied at the time of the sale. Fred Stahl and Sheldon Stahl of Houlihan-Parnes handled the loan.
BIRMINGHAM, ALA. — Cohen Commercial Properties has refinanced Roebuck Marketplace, a 193,481-square-foot, open-air shopping center located at 91920 Parkway E. in Birmingham. Cohen’s 10-year, $16.5 million loan is structured at 75 percent LTV with a 4.8 percent interest rate. The shopping center is 93.5 percent leased to tenants such as Planet Fitness, Citi Trends, Rite Aid, Dollar Tree, Harbor Freight Tools, Rainbow USA and It’s Fashion Metro. The property is shadow-anchored by a Walmart Supercenter.
RESTON, VA. — Transwestern Investment Group (TIG) has acquired Parkridge III, a 107,400-square-foot office building located at 10701 Parkridge Blvd. in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Reston. TIG purchased the asset for an undisclosed price on behalf of Diversified International Partners, a private equity real estate fund for Latin American institutional investors. TIG is the fund manager. The asset was 91 percent leased at the time of sale. Jonathan Napper of TIG worked directly with the seller’s brokers: Eric Berkman and Steve Gichner of Cushman & Wakefield.
With a booming tourism industry driving economic expansion and a new owner/renter paradigm impacting apartment renter dynamics, Orlando is experiencing continued expansion in apartment development. Currently, development for more than 22 apartment communities totaling over 6,000 units is underway in just three hot submarkets. Demand has continued to keep up with this new supply, surging to a 10-year high in the second quarter of 2014, with market-wide occupancies topping 95 percent. Job Creation Metro Orlando is predicted to have an average annual growth rate of 4.1 percent from 2013 to 2020, putting it 13th for growth among American cities, according to a report from the U.S. Conference of Mayors. With an unemployment rate of 5.7 percent — well below both state and national unemployment averages — Orlando is outpacing much of the country in job creation and economic growth. Orlando’s $50 billion tourism industry has undeniably distinguished itself as the leader for growth in Central Florida, with the largest theme parks currently undergoing historic expansions. This will add thousands of jobs to Central Florida’s employment market over the next few years. For example, Disney World announced in early July that it is actively hiring for 1,000 new local jobs, and …