Buchanan Street Partners closed 2018 on a high note, completing one of the largest apartment transactions of the year in Colorado.
The Newport Beach-based real estate investment management firm paid $72.5 million for Creekside at Palmer Park, a 328-unit complex five miles east of dowtown Colorado Springs.
The deal went for about $221,000 per unit. By total price, it was the largest sale of the year in that city, according to the buyer.
The 16-building property, built in 2003, totals 325,700 square feet, and is on nearly 20 acres of land. It was about 95% leased at the time of sale.
Buchanan Street has bought about 14,000 apartment units since its founding 20 years ago, initially by providing capital to regional operating partners.
More recently, it has begun to buy and operate multifamily deals directly. It’s bought four complexes under this model since mid-2017, all in Utah and Colorado—areas “where we believe there to be excellent job formation and investment value to be realized,” Chief Executive Robert Brunswick told the Business Journal last week.
About a year ago, it paid $60 million for a complex in Lafayette, Colo., just outside Boulder.
Buchanan Street said it intends to hold onto the Creekside property for the long term.
Colorado Springs is an attractive investment market for Buchanan Street, according to Kevin Hampton, multifamily executive vice president for the investment company. “Increases in the region’s economic activity and population continue to favorably impact the demand for multifamily housing.”
Mile High Leasing
Elsewhere in Colorado, Newport Beach-based KBS Realty Advisors has made some big leasing news.
The company’s KBS REIT II affiliate recently completed 384,716 square feet of leasing at Denver’s Granite Tower, a 31-story office tower it owns in the city.
The largest transaction there was a 12-year extension with energy giant Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: APC). At 295,743 square feet, it’s the largest lease signed in Denver in 2018, according to local reports.
Granite Tower, which KBS bought in 2010 for $149 million, is one of nine properties in the KBS REIT II portfolio.
Others in the same portfolio include Los Angeles’ Union Bank Plaza tower, which the investor unsuccessfully tried to sell last year. KBS paid $208 million for it in 2010.
PNW Buys
Irvine’s LBA Realty LLC capped off a busy 2018 with a nearly $100 million portfolio buy of industrial properties near Seattle, according to reports out of the Pacific Northwest.
The privately held investor paid $98.5 million for a half-dozen warehouse and distribution buildings near the Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, according to a report in the Puget Sound publication The Registry.
The facilities totaled about 490,000 square feet and sold for about $201 per square foot, according to that report.
The buildings were sold by San Francisco-based ProLogis Inc., the country’s largest owner of industrial properties.
They’re about a dozen miles south of Seattle, and are part of the Prologis Park SeaTac business park.
LBA—whose best-known area property is the Park Place mixed-use campus near John Wayne Airport in Irvine—has been an active investor in industrial properties in the Pacific Northwest over the past few years. Its website lists 20 industrial properties to its name in the area.
Elsewhere in the country, LBA is the latest area landlord making deals with coworking giant WeWork Inc.
The first WeWork location in the Phoenix area will be in an office LBA owns in that city, according to a news report this month in the Phoenix Business Journal.
WeWork also leases 60,000 square feet of space in a building that LBA owns in Culver City.
