Griffin Capital Gets $111M Refi for 5-Property Portfolio

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

Kevin MacKenzie, HFF

Griffin Capital Corp., of El Segundo, Calif., and five single-purpose borrowing entities, wholly owned by the operating partnership of Griffin Capital Essential Asset REIT Inc., have completed a $110.64 million refinancing of a five-property, 889,800-square-foot  office and industrial portfolio, it was announced Tuesday by HFF, which arranged the financing for Griffin.

The financing for the five properties, in New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Arizona, consisted of a 15-year, 4.96 percent, non-recourse, fixed-rate loan through two life companies. Loan proceeds were used to pay down an existing credit facility and secure long-term fixed-rate financing at about 60 percent loan-to-value.

The portfolio is cross-collateralized, cross-defaulted and substantially leased to investment-grade quality tenants with staggered lease expirations. The individual properties (with tenants in parentheses) are:

• Verizon Building (Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless); Warren, N.J.; 210,524 square feet
• UTC Building (United Technologies Corp.); Charlotte, N.C.; 198,898 square feet
• Northrop Building (Northrop Grumman Systems Corp.); Beavercreek, Ohio; 99,246 square feet
• Schlumberger Building (Schlumberger Technology Corp.); Houston; 149,683 square feet
• Avnet Building (Avnet Inc.); Chandler, Ariz.; 231,454 square feet

“With this financing transaction, we reduced our short-term, secured debt obligations and lengthened our debt maturities to more closely align with our weighted average lease duration,” Joseph Miller, CFO of Griffin Capital Corp., said in a release.

The HFF team representing the borrower was led by senior managing director Kevin MacKenzie and director John Chun, with regional support from managing directors Stephen Skok and Tucker Knight and director Michael Klein.

“The strong sponsorship, quality of the assets and the credit of the tenants made this an attractive opportunity to the debt markets,” MacKenzie said in the same release.

The Verizon-tenanted building in Warren, N.J., was purchased by Griffin just last October.

The building in Chandler, Ariz., purchased last May for about $32.5 million, is a Class A flex R&D building completed in 2008 as a BTS for Avnet Inc., a distributor of electronics components.