To serve its current needs, Cornish last year acquired the 118,000-sf, seven-story office building at 10th and Lenora, the nearby Sons of Norway Hall on Boren Avenue and an adjacent 15,000-sf warehouse building. The office building, for which it paid $18 million, will hold classrooms and administrative office space, while the Sons of Norway building will be a performance hall and the warehouse will be used for set production.

All the purchases were brokered for Cornish by Colliers International SVP Tim Foster, who tells GlobeSt.com the owner user segment is very active right now. "A lot of tenants are deciding to become owners," says Foster. "It is primarily driven by interest rates, which allow people to acquire buildings and effectively freeze what would be their rental rate for the next 10 years."

Providing inspiration for brokers everywhere, Foster says the plum assignment resulted from a cold call. "I called them about a building they might want to lease, and they said 'we don't want to lease, we want to buy,'" recalls Foster, who never made a formal presentation to win the assignment. "I just started running with it--and didn't tell a soul."