Huge Westlake Office Campus Sells To Chicago Investors

Two Chicago investors have teamed up to buy a huge Westlake office campus.

GlenStar and partner Singerman Real Estate have acquired eight buildings in the Solana business park on State Highway 114.

The purchase includes more than 1 million square feet of offices along with the Solana Fitness Club and land for additional development.

The Solana development, originally built for IBM in the 1980s, has been up for grabs since last summer.

The landmark property was sold by Blackstone Group and its affiliate, Equity Office Properties, which purchased the development in 2014.

“With the recent corporate relocations and significant construction activity in the market, this was a unique opportunity to acquire an office campus in a high-growth area and deploy our proven redevelopment strategy,” GlenStar principal Matt Omundson said in a statement. “We are looking forward to repositioning and rebranding the asset.”

Terms of the sale were not disclosed. Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP marketed the property for sale.

When the buildings hit the market in 2018, they were less than 40% leased.

Major business tenants include Sabre Corp., Verizon, Goosehead Insurance and Marsh & McLennan.

The just-sold office complex called the Terrace at Solana has six five-story buildings with 375,000 square feet, a 309,000-square-foot, six-story building and a three-story, 129,000-square-foot building.

The new owners say they plan to “inject significant capital to create a truly contemporary campus setting with enhanced tenant amenities and activated outdoor corridors.”

Redevelopment plans include a new conference center, a tenant-only fitness center, a tenant lounge, and patios and entertainment space.

“Today’s discerning tenants want more from their office locations,” Omundson said.

The previous owners, Blackstone Group and Equity Office Properties, already invested about $50 million to upgrade the entire Solana development. The sale also includes about 20 acres for additional construction.

When Solana was started in 1986, the business park was on the edge of North Texas’ urban growth.

Award-winning Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta originally designed the campus, and almost 3,000 IBM employees were housed at Solana when it opened.

The project is now between DFW International Airport and Alliance Airport in one of the fastest-growing areas of North Texas.

Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade have large new office campuses nearby. And Sabre Corp., Deloitte and Fidelity Investments have thousands of workers in the same area.

The Solana purchase is GlenStar’s second major property investment in North Texas. The firm is renovating the more than 1 million-square-foot Energy Square office complex on North Central Expressway in North Dallas.

During the past decade, GlenStar has bought more than 8 million square feet of U.S. office, retail, residential and medical buildings.

Singerman Real Estate is making its first Dallas-Fort Worth acquisition with the Westlake deal. Since 2010, the company has been part of $2.5 billion of investments in office, retail, hotel, industrial and multifamily projects.

Source: dallasnews.com