RALEIGH, N.C.-In a sign that investors are looking beyond gateway cities for office investments, two towers in the Durham have traded. 4820 Emperor Boulevard and Nottingham Hall set the stage for a potentially busy Triangle commercial real estate market in 2011.

“Institutional capital isn’t considering only top tier cities like D.C. and New York anymore,” Paul Collins, executive managing director at Cassidy Turley, tells GlobeSt.com. “These two trades signal that people feel better about the economy, so they are looking at other cities to find yield and they feel like this is a pretty safe area. There is demonstrable employment growth and it’s a good time to get into these cities before all the other institutional capital jumps in.”

Cassidy Turley brokered the sale of 4820 Emperor Boulevard, a recently-constructed, 259,531-square-foot, LEED Silver, trophy asset in Durham. 4820 Emperor Boulevard is an 11-story landmark office tower, the tallest building along I-40 between Wilmington, N.C. and Nashville, TN. Paul Collins, Bill Collins, Drew Flood, Jud Ryan, and James Cassidy of Cassidy Turley represented the seller, Principal Real Estate Investors, LLC. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.