Unico Properties Recapitalizes Skyline Tower

BELLEVUE, WA-Transwestern Investment Co.’s institutional investment fund, Aslan Realty Partners II LP, has acquired an 80% stake in the 408,000-sf Skyline Tower office building here for an undisclosed price. The interest was acquired from Wafra Investment Advisory Group, Citigroup North America Inc. and Seattle-based Unico Properties, which jointly acquired the building in 1998 for $89 million, or about $222 per sf.Aslan Realty Partners II LP acquired all of the interests held by Wafra and Citigroup, which totaled about 50%, and acquired the other 30% from Unico, which had held a 50% interest. Unico principal John Bliss tells GlobeSt.com that Wafra and Citigroup decided to sell because they were at “the end of their investment horizon” and it was the right time to sell. Skyline Tower is a 24-story office building in the Bellevue CBD that is currently 94% occupied. The transaction did not include a refinance of the debt on the property, held by GE Capital, because the prepayment penalty is too steep, says Bliss. The loan matures in 2008.The building represents Transwestern’s first foray into the Seattle office market, but likely won’t be its last. Transwestern executive Erwin Aulis says in a prepared statement that Transwestern “looks forward to expanding (its) relationship with Unico.”As previously reported by GlobeSt.com, Unico also is in the process of recapitalizing the partnership that owns US Bancorp Tower, the 1.1-million-sf office building in Downtown Portland it acquired in 2000 for about $165 million. Sources familiar with the transaction tell GlobeSt.com the Seattle-based real estate company is bringing in Menlo Park, CA-based Broadreach Capital Partners to take out its 50-50 partner in the asset, JP Morgan, which is liquidating the fund that holds its interest in Oregon’s largest office building.Broadreach is the real estate private equity firm formed in early 2002 by Ned Spieker, John Foster, Eli Khouri and Craig Vought, four former top executives of Spieker Properties, which merged with Equity office Properties in a 2001 transaction that valued Spieker at more than $7 billion. The Broadreach team also includes director Trevor Wilson, who previously handled JP Morgan’s acquisition and asset management activities in the Western US and was intimately involved in JP Morgan’s acquisition of US Bancorp Tower. In addition to taking out JP Morgan, Lamb says Unico and its new partner will put in additional cash in order to take out one of the lenders on the asset, Wafra Investment Advisory Group, Inc., a US-registered investment adviser that is beneficially owned by the Public Institution for Social Security of Kuwait, an autonomous agency controlled by the State of Kuwait. Unico’s core business is its partnership with the University of Washington, wherein it has operated and managed for 53 years the university’s Metropolitan Tract, a 10-acre chunk of prime real estate in Downtown Seattle that includes Rainier Tower, Puget Sound Plaza, Financial Center, IBM Building, the Skinner Building and the Cobb Building, which is now being converted from office to residential. With its partnership set to expire in 2014, Unico has been making its own investments to ensure itself a future if it does not retain the contract.