DFW Office Buildings Change Hands

By Georgiana Mihaila, Associate Editor

Notably, the biggest acquisition reported this past week was the former Nortel Network Corp. campus at 2201-2221 Lakeside Blvd. in Richardson’s Telecom Corridor. Bought out of foreclosure, it traded for just $43.1 million. Buyer Pillar Commercial plans on spending another several hundred thousand dollars on cosmetic updates to the common areas, including the lobby and the restrooms, but has not released nor even determined an exact budget yet.

The complex, one of the largest blocks of available space in the corridor, consists of two buildings and encompasses 800,000 square feet of office space, of which 150,000 is designed for research. Its 16-story office building is roughly 30 percent occupied by Ericsson and Avaya, and Pillar gave itself two to three years to backfill the vacant space. As for the adjoining research and laboratory building, Pillar considers it more likely to rent to a sole tenant.

Another purchase was the property at 1120 Empire Central Place in Dallas, acquired by a Houston-based investment group that was reluctant to release its name or the terms of the sale. What the investment group did disclose were its plans to re-tenant the 23,000-square-foot office space that is currently unoccupied. SB&T Assets Corp., the seller of the three-story vacant building, was represented in the sale by Bright Realty’s Kerry Assa and Tony Albanese.

This comes just a few days after an announcement made by One Oak Over the Line L.L.C. according to which the company has now become the owner of Arlington Oaks Office Park. The 13-building office park had been in the possession of seller KTAO Partners for 17 years; the owner recently contracted Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services to market the property.

The 94,130-square-foot complex stands on eight-and-a-half acres of land at 208 Billings St. in Arlington and currently has an occupancy level below 50 percent. Nearly four acres of land adjacent to the complex were also included in the transaction, whose financial details have not yet been disclosed.