Crown West Realty

By Amy Wolff Sorter
July 23, 2007
GlobeSt.com

PHOENIX – A value-add investor headquartered in New York City sold the 144,910-sf Foothills Corporate Centre II to a TIC buyer from Los Angeles, receiving $29.5 million in the process. Crown West Realty LLC disposed of the two-building, class A office asset following a two-year hold complete with lease-up.

“This was purely a rent roll play for us. The property had about 25,000 sf that had been vacant since the building was completed in 2000,” Bob Olshan, vice president and southwest region head of Crown West, tells GlobeSt.com. He says that Crown West extended AT&T’s lease, which included a 5,000-sf tenant give-back in the center at 14601 and 14605 S. 50th St. “That allowed us to complete a 30,000-sf lease with Alaska Airlines. Plus we made an early renewal with Global Crossing,” Olshan adds.

The result was that buyer, FORT Properties Inc., ended up with a stable class A asset. Olshan notes that AT&T’s lease expires next year, but he doesn’t anticipate the company going anywhere. “It’s their redundant facility. They’d have to build another before they could take this one off line,” he says, adding that 8,500 sf comes up for renewal in 2010, the most activity that will be seen until 2017.

When Crown West acquired the property in late 2005 for $16 million, occupancy was 82%. At the recent closing, the center was 100% occupied.

According to Chris Toci with Cushman & Wakefield of Phoenix Inc., the center’s month-long marketing period attracted more than a dozen offers. “FORT is new to the area, and had been aggressively trying to make their way into Phoenix,” says Toci, the seller representative. “They liked the asset, loved the location and liked the fact it was a very stable rent roll with good credit.”

Toci, who worked with Cushman & Wakefield’s Ted Harrison, Dave Seeger and Karsten Peterson, says that Foothills Centre II is FORT’s first area investment, and the company is looking for other assets.