The REIT's new deeds are a 100,000-sf office/warehouse at 1135 W. Trinity Mills Rd. and 91,000-sf building at 2425 Carter Dr., both in Carrollton; and 151,845-sf structure at 1011 Royal Lane, situated on ground-leased land at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The real estate is all class A, with only 46,000 sf left to fill. Commonfund Realty of Wilton, CT sold the Carrollton portfolio and Dallas-based Bandera Ventures Ltd. passed the Royal Lane deed in the back-to-back closings.
In turning over the two-asset portfolio, the Commonfund has sold the last of its industrial holdings in the metroplex. The fund started the disposition in January with the hand-off of a 97,079-sf building on 5.9 acres at 2525 Carter Dr. to Fong Kai USA Inc. The fund also has 24 acres along Ranch Trail Road in Las Colinas on the market with its long-time broker, Tom Smolik, principal of TIG Real Estate Services Inc. in Dallas, and for now, plans to hold fast to an office building in Turtle Creek.
Smolik tells GlobeSt.com that the Carrollton duo was marketed only to a select group of buyers, with Cobalt topping three other offers on the table. The final price is off limits, but comparable class A space in similar deal dynamics has been fetching about $40 per sf at the closing table. The Carter Drive building is fully leased to two tenants and the 3.4-acre asset along West Trinity Mills Road has the 46,000-sf hole to be filled. Smolik's TIG team will continue to lease and manage the package, which are less than one-third mile apart.
"The upside is when we lease the remaining 25%," Smolik says, "and we've got a couple deals pending for them. Smolik says Commonfund bought the buildings three years ago, empty and needing some repairs. "Commonfund was extremely happy with the price they got," Smolik says, adding the package traded for close to a 7% cap rate.
In the second sale, Cobalt bought a core class A building on 7.45 acres with the Dallas Cowboys occupying 75% and Direct Logistics Inc. in the balance for the long term. Cushman & Wakefield of Texas Inc.'s senior director Kurt Griffin and associates Natalie Kampen and Wilson Stafford represented the developer of the three-year-old building built as a $5-million spec project.
"We had a half dozen looking really closely at this deal," Griffin says, adding, most lookers and bidders were funds. "There were a few people who declined the opportunity because of the ground lease. But really, the quality of the asset is what overcame that."
To make the close, Griffin says Cobalt signed a new ground lease with the airport board and worked through a loan assumption. "There was some extra work they had to put in to make it happen. I'm very happy with the way they performed," he stresses. Start to finish, the deal required six months to close, with no insight being provided as to the cost. However, other ground-leased airport buildings have been tipping the scale at upward of $60 per sf.
Lewis. D. Friedland, managing partner of Cobalt, launched the second fund last fall, amassing $410 million in equity from seven institutional investors to acquire and develop light-industrial space. The development component represents 20% of the fund and is being led by Dirk P.D. Mosis III, the REIT's San Antonio-based managing director who was with USAA Real Estate Co., one of Cobalt's longstanding investors.
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