MINNEAPOLIS—KBS REIT II, Inc. recently agreed to sell 601 Tower at Carlson Center in suburban Minnetonka to Artis REIT for $75 million, according to a document filed yesterday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. KBS originally purchased the 288,458-square-foot property in 2011 for $54 million. Many significant office properties in the Twin Cities have changed hands in the past year, and this latest profitable sale underlines again how attractive investors now find the metro area's office market.
According to the 8-K form it filed with the SEC, the Newport Beach, CA-based KBS entered into a purchase and sale agreement on April 28 with Artis US Holdings II LP, the wholly-owned subsidiary of the Canada-based Artis. The 15-story tower sits on about 2.3 acres of land and forms one-half of the two-tower Carlson Center. The other tower is not part of the sale.
The companies' officials could not comment because the sale has not yet closed. But Artis officials did say in a prepared statement that 601 Tower is now “over 99% occupied, with 40% of the asset leased to credit tenants, including Wells Fargo Advisors, RBC Capital Markets, OneBeacon Services, LLC, and HQ Global Workplaces.”
Six of the Minneapolis' major office towers traded hands in the past year, with a total of more than 3.4-million-square-feet, a pace not seen since before the recession. During 2013, for example, Florida-based Beacon Investment Properties LLC bought the iconic IDS Center for $253 million. Other major sales include the Oracle Centre, a 20-story building at 900 Second Avenue South, which was sold to a joint venture between Investcorp International and Wildamere Properties, and the 40-story RBC Plaza.
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
