Parkway Buys Trophy Buckhead Asset for $79M

ATLANTA-Capital City Plaza, a 15-year-old, 17-story, 410,000-sf, class A office property in the Buckhead, GA submarket of metro Atlanta has a new owner today and also lays claim to signing the largest office lease of the year to date.Parkway Properties Inc. of Jackson, MS paid Rubenstein Cos. of Philadelphia $78.6 million, or $192 per sf, for the 92%-leased, Peachtree Road building. The per-sf price is the largest to date for an office property in metro Atlanta, area brokers tell GlobeSt.com. The deal also includes an adjoining five-story parking garage with 726 spaces, a surface lot with 81 spaces and rights to an adjacent lot with 349 spaces.Besides acquiring a trophy asset, Parkway’s tenant roll includes Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Georgia which renewed its 265,000-sf lease for 10 years at an estimated aggregate rent of $53 million, by far the biggest deal of its kind in metro Atlanta office circles in the last five years, brokers tabulating Downtown office leases tell GlobeSt.com. Brokers based their aggregate rent value on an estimated effective average rent of $20 per sf.In a prepared statement, Parkway president and CEO Steven G. Rogers says his company is “pleased to acquire a landmark building in the highly sought after Buckhead submarket.” Rogers says “the building’s quality, excellent location and long term credit leases make it an excellent joint venture candidate.”The acquisition raises Parkway’s local presence to about 1.4 million sf of office product, Rogers says. The property’s actual price was $76.3 million, plus $2.3 million in closing costs and anticipated capital expenditures and leasing commissions during the first two years of ownership, the CEO says.The purchase was funded with the REIT’s existing lines of credit; the assumption of an existing first mortgage of about $44 million; and the issuance of $15.5 million in preferred membership interests to the seller.”Based upon current occupancy, the property is expect to produce an initial unleveraged yield, or going-in cash capitalization rate of about 8.7% in the first 12 months of operations,” Rogers says. The $44-million, fixed-rate, non-recourse mortgage that Parkway assumed matures in August 2008 and bears interest at 6.75%. The mortgage was marked to a market rate of 3.67% at closing, “per generally accepted accounting principles,” the Parkway CEO says.”The $15.5-million preferred membership interest pays the seller a 7% coupon rate and was issued to accommodate their tax planning needs,” Rogers says. “The seller has the right to redeem $5 million of the membership interest within six months of closing.”Rubenstein Cos., the seller, then has the right to redeem the remaining $10.5 million in membership interest within 40 months of closing. Parkway has the right to retire the preferred interest 40 months after closing.Besides Blue Cross/Blue Shield, other tenants at Capital City Plaza who together occupy about 76% of the property are Industrial Logic, a satellite communications software firm leasing 27,000 sf through 2011; and Jefferson Pilot, leasing 16,000 sf through 2014.