EAST ORANGE, N.J. — KeyBank Community Development & Lending Investment has provided a $54.8 million bridge loan for Essence 144, an apartment community located at 144 S. Harrison St. in East Orange. The borrower is Blackstone 360, a design-build firm based in Newark, N.J. Essence 144 is an adaptive reuse project in which the abandoned 12-story existing structure was redeveloped into a 144-unit apartment community. Tom Peloquin and John Gilmore IV of KeyBank arranged the refinancing.
ATLANTA — Chicago-based Coyote, a logistics provider and subsidiary of UPS, has signed a lease for 47,986-square-feet of office space within Armour Yards, an adaptive reuse project situated between Atlanta’s Midtown and Buckhead districts. Coyote will lease the entire office portion at 255 Ottley, bringing the overall Armour Yards project to 86.4 percent leased. Gourmet coffee roaster East Pole Coffee Co. will also open at 255 Ottley later this month. Brooke Dewey of JLL represented the ownership group comprising Third and Urban and institutional investors advised by J.P Morgan Asset Management in the lease transaction. MB Real Estate’s David Burkards represented Coyote. The Armour Yards location will be the second Atlanta-area office for the logistics company and will create roughly 325 jobs. Coyote’s existing location is situated at 960 North Point Parkway in Alpharetta, roughly 25 miles north of Atlanta. Situated near the Atlanta BeltLine, Armour Yards comprises 28 buildings and is home to companies including Sweetwater Brewing Co., American Spirit Works, Atlanta Track Club and Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q. The project team includes Smith Dalia Architects and general contractor Gay Construction. Armour Yards’ loft-office portion is housed within four former industrial buildings totaling 190,000 square feet.
Given his background in business development, Fred Schmidt, president and chief operating officer of Coldwell Banker Commercial Affiliates, is accustomed to analyzing real estate trends over his 36 years in the industry. Schmidt, who joined Madison, N.J.-based Coldwell Banker Commercial in 2003 as vice president of business development, is not nearly as surprised by the spate of retail store closures as some of his colleagues seem to be. REBusinessOnline.com sat down with Schmidt at the International Council of Shopping Center’s RECon event in Las Vegas in late May. In addition to discussing his firm’s push into retail markets in major cities, Schmidt shared his insights on how to repurpose malls. REBusinessOnline.com: Why are we seeing so many store closures and retail bankruptcies at this time? Fred Schmidt: It’s not a new discussion. It’s common knowledge that Class A malls are doing very well and that the discounters — the top end and bottom end — have been doing well over the years. But there was a prediction four or five years ago that the Class B and C malls were going to suffer because they didn’t have the right merchandising. These changes are now manifesting themselves in terms of the …
The latest CoStar Industrial Report for Providence reports that 2016 ended on a positive note on many fronts for the industrial real estate sector. The Providence industrial vacancy rate overall was down to 4.6 percent, a steady drop from 4.8 percent at the end of third quarter 2016, 5.3 percent at the end of second quarter 2016 and 6.4 percent at end of first quarter 2016. Flex projects showed a vacancy rate of 7.1 percent at end of fourth quarter 2016, a sharp drop from a rate that held largely steady for most of 2016 (11.4 percent for end of third quarter 2016, 11 percent at end of second and 11.5 percent at end of first quarter). For warehouse projects, the vacancy rate at the end of fourth quarter was just 4.4 percent, no change from end of third quarter, but down from 5 percent at end of second quarter and 6 percent at end of first quarter. It’s more good news for the state’s industrial outlook that the current administration has prioritized bringing businesses and jobs here. There’s evidence in the CoStar report to support that claim. Look at the third-largest lease signing of 2016. It was enacted by …
Pittsburgh retail can be summed up in three words: location, location, location — and the original definition of great real estate has never been more pronounced than it is today in the Pittsburgh retail market. According to some publications, retail and retailers appear to be struggling almost everywhere for many different reasons, including online sales, too many stores, market conditions and oversaturation of product. However, as of year-end 2016, CoStar indicated that the overall Pittsburgh retail market occupancy rate was 96.8 percent. Pittsburgh has natural barriers to entry for retail due to its topography, which includes numerous hills and valleys, making it often times impossible to build a “newer, bigger, better” retail property across the street. As a result, many developers have successfully repurposed older centers through adaptive reuse, converting them in keeping with the latest and greatest retail trends. Other older centers have successfully withstood the test of time, replacing outdated retail concepts with today’s current concepts at significantly lower costs than building a new center. Adaptive reuse of Pittsburgh retail started decades ago when the May Company relocated Kaufmann’s Department Stores from four freestanding locations into the dominant regional malls, leaving one- and two-story 200,000-square-foot boxes vacant. Local …
For the first time in quite a while, the Birmingham office market has experienced a rejuvenation and resurgence, catered around growth, a diversification of the tenant base and an effort to attract and retain bright young minds. Like many markets nationally, the city’s focus on urban renewal has made downtown Birmingham an attractive place to live, work and play, and thus will help companies attract talent to the market. Birmingham has entered a new era of industry and residential growth with one of the Southeast’s most dynamic markets after evolving from a historically steel and manufacturing-focused economy. Driven by a new generation of local leaders who have focused on developing biotechnology, life sciences and automotive sectors as catalysts for growth, Birmingham has witnessed a remarkable economic transformation. A preference for dynamic locations to live, work and play is occurring in Birmingham, as a significant amount of development has taken place in downtown Birmingham. While the bulk of this activity is occurring on the multifamily side, the same factors that draw people to live downtown are expected to positively impact the desire of employees to work downtown. In the long run, it is reasonable to expect office development to take off …
A common baseball analogy that explains where we are in the real estate cycle is “What inning are we in?” Regardless of the inning, in North Texas we’re just hoping it’s the first game of a doubleheader! The first quarter of 2017 was another respectable one for leasing activity in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) industrial market. Total absorption for all properties was 5.5 million square feet, with 6 percent vacancy across 786.5 million square feet of industrial space. New supply totaled 6.6 million square feet for the first quarter. Just over 8 million square feet of new construction is underway in DFW, with 15 million square feet designated “big box,” or more than 200,000 square feet. Big box experienced absorption of 4.6 million square feet in the first quarter, despite having only 3.8 million square feet of new supply. The metroplex has been the beneficiary of some very large lease signings. Amazon alone is responsible for multiple leases totaling several million square feet. UPS recently leased a 1 million-square-foot property in Arlington, and Ashley Furniture announced the purchase of 358 acres in Mesquite for an 850,000-square-foot design/build distribution facility. In addition, a 1.4 million–square-foot, build-to-suit lease by a well-known real …
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Berkadia has arranged the sale of Mayfair Lofts, a 107-unit apartment community located at 100 W. Cleveland St. in Spartanburg, a town in South Carolina’s Upstate region near Greenville. A developer based in Georgia sold the asset to an investment firm based in South Carolina for $10.6 million. The community is an adaptive reuse of Arcadia Mill No. 2, which was built in 1922. Renovated in 2008 and fully occupied at the time of sale, Mayfair Lofts comprises one- and two-bedroom units outfitted with 16- to 18-foot ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, stained concrete floors, exposed brick interiors and monochromatic appliances. Community amenities include a pool, fitness center, library, dog park, clubroom with a pool table, enclosed parking garage, grills and a fire pit. Included in the purchase is 50,000 square feet of developable commercial space. Jeremiah Jarmin and Mark Boyce of Berkadia represented both the buyer and seller in the transaction.
ERIE, PA. — The Woda Group Inc. is developing Willow Commons, a $9.5 million seniors housing property located at 2064 Willow St. in Erie. A combination of new construction and the adaptive reuse of The Wesleyville Public School, Willow Commons will feature 29 one-bedroom and 16 two-bedroom affordable apartments for seniors age 62 or older, with income levels below 60 percent of area median income. Slated for completion this fall, the property will feature a community room with kitchen, common laundry, a library/craft room, an exercise room, an outdoor space with a community garden and seating area.
Memphis may be known for its industrial market, but there are several interesting stories unfolding in the Memphis office market as well. Investors, both local and national, have found opportunities in an office market that can relate to the phrase, “slow and steady wins the race.” The Memphis office market consists of just over 52 million square feet, with nearly 60 percent of that in the Downtown, East and 385 Corridor submarkets and more than 85 percent of the Class A space located in those same submarkets. The Memphis metro ended 2016 with overall vacancy rates of 10.5 percent. Those rates have remained in the 10.5 to 10.9 percent range for the last two years. Class A vacancy has been on a slow and steady decline, falling from 10.2 percent at the end of 2014 to 7.9 percent at the end of 2016, its lowest level in more than a decade. This has prompted Class B owners to make investments in their properties, like the $7 million capital investment by Clark Tower, located in the East Memphis submarket, to upgrade mechanical systems and common areas. Rates, too, have been relatively steady for the last decade. At $17.07 per square foot …
