DALLAS — Global investment bank Houlihan Lokey has signed a 74,805-square-foot office lease at The Link at Uptown, a 25-story building in Dallas. Houlihan Lokey will occupy the top three floors of the Class A building beginning in early 2023. Travis Ewert of Colliers and Jihane Boury of CBRE represented the Los Angeles-based tenant in the lease negotiations. JLL’s Blake Shipley and Thirty-Four Commercial’s Sarah Kennington and Bryce Jackson represented the landlord, Kaizen Development Partners. Other tenants at The Link at Uptown include global law firm Shearman & Sterling and digital marketing agency PMG.
Content PartnerFeaturesIndustrialLeasing ActivityLee & AssociatesMarket ReportsMidwestMultifamilyNortheastOfficeRetailSoutheastTexasWestern
Lee & Associates’ First-Quarter 2022 Economic Rundown by Sector
Lee & Associates’ newly released Q1 2022 North America Market Report scrutinizes first-quarter 2022 industrial, office, retail and multifamily outlooks throughout the United States. This class-by-class review of commercial real estate trends for the first quarter of the year focuses on how real estate is adjusting to long-term post-COVID attitudes. Lee & Associates has made the full market report available here (with further breakdowns of factors like vacancy rates, market rents, inventory square footage and cap rates by city), but the overviews offered below provide sweeping looks at the overall health and obstacles for four major commercial real estate sectors. Industrial: Rents Pushed on Strong Demand Strong demand for industrial space throughout North America continued in the first quarter as vacancies fell to record lows and rent growth hit double digits. First quarter net absorption in the United States totaled 92.8 million square feet, which was up 25 percent year over year but down 35 percent from the 143-million-square feet average of the last three quarters of 2021. Annualized rents rose 10.1 percent in the U.S. and the average vacancy rate fell to 4.1 percent. Part of this trend was due to a pause in new construction starts early in the pandemic. However, …
KATY, TEXAS — Mirae Asset Global Investments, a global investment firm based in Seoul, South Korea, has purchased the headquarters campus of sporting goods retail giant Academy Sports + Outdoors (Nasdaq: ASO) in the west Houston suburb of Katy. Phoenix-based Tratt Properties sold the 1.5 million-square-foot campus, which is triple-net leased to Academy Sports on a long-term lease, for $190 million. The 93-acre campus includes a little over 1.2 million square feet of warehouse space, 250,000 square feet of flexible office space and mezzanine space totaling approximately 800,000 square feet. Located at 1800 N. Mason Road, the site has immediate access to Interstate 10 and Texas Highway 99, which circles Houston. “From a logistics perspective, this property is exceptionally well-located, with access to highways in all directions,” says Ken Hedrick, executive managing director of Newmark. “The scarcity and increasing value of land in the west Houston area further enhance the property’s value.” Hedrick, along with Newmark colleagues Jerry Hopkins, Andrew Ragsdale, Alex Foshay and Kristian Nielsen, represented Tratt Properties in the sale. Dustin Stolly, Jordan Roeschlaub and Nick Scribani, also with Newmark, arranged acquisition financing on behalf of Mirae Asset Global. Tratt Properties is an active logistics real estate investor …
SAN ANTONIO — Kansas City-based VanTrust Real Estate will develop Cornerstone Commerce Park, a 60-acre speculative industrial project in northeast San Antonio. Phase I of the project, construction of which is slated to begin in July and to last about 12 months, will consist of two buildings totaling 413,173 square feet. VanTrust has also acquired land for the second phase, which could comprise up to four additional buildings totaling over 600,000 square feet. CBRE has been tapped to lease the development.
DALLAS — Comunidad Partners, an investment firm that specializes in affordable and workforce housing, has acquired Villas del Zocalo, a 437-unit affordable housing community in East Dallas. Taylor Snoddy of Northmarq brokered the deal. The seller and sales price were not disclosed. The new ownership plans to invest in capital improvements to preserve the property’s affordability status. Specific information on income restrictions was not disclosed.
TULSA AND CUSHING, OKLA. — Plains Commercial has arranged the sale of three skilled nursing facilities totaling 243 beds in Tulsa and Cushing, Oklahoma. Two of the buildings were built in the 1960s and 1970s and had undergone extensive renovations in recent years. The third was built in 1997. The seller was a locally based seniors housing operator, and the buyer is one of the largest skilled nursing operators in the state. Both parties requested anonymity. Daniel Morris of Plains Commercial handled the transaction.
HOUSTON — Locally based developer MetroNational is underway on construction of a 190,000-square-foot office project at 9753 Katy Freeway in Houston’s Memorial City District. Designed by Kirksey Architecture, the nine-story building marks the latest addition to the 10 million-square-foot mixed-use campus and will be situated adjacent to The McKinley, a newly built high-rise apartment tower. Completion is scheduled for the second quarter of 2023.
CEDAR PARK, TEXAS — Locally based private equity firm Door Capital Partners has purchased a 75-room La Quinta Inn & Suites hotel in Cedar Park, a northern suburb of Austin. Built in 2009, the Wyndham-branded hotel offers a mix of traditional guestrooms and suites, as well as a fitness center, onsite laundry facilities, indoor pool and 625 square feet of meeting and event space. C.W. Sheehan, Matt Ctvrtlik and Hunt Wood of JLL arranged a five-year, fixed-rate acquisition loan through Alliance Bank Central Texas on behalf of Door Capital Partners.
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Lincoln Property Co. (LPC) and co-developer Phoenix Property Co. (PPC) have partnered with DivcoWest to develop The Republic, a 48-story office tower in downtown Austin. The developers say they have secured the building’s first major tenant, enabling construction to move forward. The developers expect to break ground on the project in the second quarter of this year. Located at 401 W. 4th St. and spanning 833,000 square feet, The Republic will overlook Lady Bird Lake and offer a direct connection to Republic Square Park. The office tower will feature a green public plaza at its main entrance that will act as an extension of the park. A 19th-floor amenity level will boast more than 50,000 square feet of indoor-outdoor space, including conference rooms, a fitness center, clubroom and a 25,000-square-foot outdoor terrace covered by canopies. In addition to the 20,000-square-foot public plaza, the ground floor will feature restaurant and retail space. Floor plates will average 29,000 square feet, and each floor will feature a private terrace. The building design by Duda Paine Architects emphasizes both outdoor space and health and wellness. Features include touchless access technology and enhanced air-filtration systems. The developers are pursuing WELLv2 Core certification, …
By Josh Meredith, director of development, VanTrust Real Estate Sharing a 2,000-mile border, Mexico and the United States trade over $500 billion worth of goods and services each year, representing our country’s second-largest trade partnership. Impressively, over 20 percent of this exchange travels through the El Paso, Texas, port of entry, according to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. This movement has deemed the El Paso/Ciudad Juarez (Mexico) region as one of the most important industrial centers in North America for years. Although the El Paso/Juarez market has a history of extensive commercial activity, with more than 1,100 manufacturing operations alone, the region has remained under the radar, experiencing traditional, steady industrial growth for the past decade. However, with undeniable strategic advantages and 300-plus Fortune 1000 companies in the El Paso/Juarez region, the past couple of years have attracted an increasing number of developers looking to capitalize on the market’s industrial and distribution needs. Now, with record net absorption and a remarkably low vacancy rate, the “borderplex” is the market to watch, building a reputation as not only a competitive industrial center, but also as a driver of some of the most important global manufacturing trends. Competitive Edge With more …