Commercial Real Estate Direct
October 25, 2019
By Staff Report
A venture of Accesso Partners and Partners Group has paid $270 million, or $150/sf, for the 1.8 million-square-foot Innovation Park office complex in Charlotte, N.C.
BECO Management Inc. of Rockville, Md., sold the property, which it had acquired in 2010 for $42 million. At the time, the property was known as the Meridian Corporate Center.
JPMorgan Chase Bank provided a $182 million loan to help fund the venture’s acquisition. The loan, which matures in October 2029, will be included in an upcoming CMBS deal. JLL brokered the latest sale and arranged the financing.
Partners Group, a Zurich, Switzerland, investment manager with $15 billion of real estate assets under management, owns a majority stake in the property. Accesso, a Hallandale Beach, Fla., investment manager, owns a minority interest and will serve as the asset and property manager. Accesso now owns 44 office properties with 16 million sf.
Innovation Park was about 37 percent leased when BECO bought it nine years ago. It is now 99 percent leased to tenants that include Allstate Corp., AXA Equitable Life Insurance Co., Alight Solutions, Classic Graphics and Wells Fargo Bank.
The 12-building complex sits on 202 acres at the intersection of IBM and Allstate drives and just off Interstate 85. It was developed in 1979 on behalf of IBM Corp., which no longer is a tenant.
The deal for Innovation Park also includes land next to the complex on which the venture plans to build a mixed-use property that will have between 3 and 5 million sf of apartment, office, retail and hotel space. The venture hopes to begin construction on the project by 2021 and complete it by 2026. The JPMorgan loan does not cover any development costs.
This is the third investment for the Accesso/Partners Group venture. Two years ago, Partners Group bought a stake in the 689,069-sf Riata Corporate Park office complex in Austin, Texas, from Accesso, which had acquired it a year earlier for $171.3 million. And earlier this year, Partners Group acquired a majority interest in eight office properties with 3.4 million sf from Accesso in a deal that valued them at $750 million.