Longfellow Real Estate Acquires Durham Office Property for $138M

Durham.ID. Image courtesy of Longfellow Real Estate Partners

Longfellow Real Estate Partners has paid $138 million to achieve full ownership of Durham.ID, a mixed-use office asset in Durham, N.C. The project is the first phase of the broader Durham Innovation District, a 1.8 million-square-foot development consisting of offices, lab, retail and residential space. Its sale marks the largest office investment transaction in the Southeast since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The previous owners included Longfellow and Bain Capital Real Estate, which was represented by JLL in the sale. A Longfellow representative told Commercial Property Executive that the company recapitalized the project and rolled it into an affiliate of its Longfellow Strategic Value Fund.

Durham.ID. Image courtesy of Longfellow Real Estate Partners

Located at 200 and 300 Morris St., the two-building office development offers a total of 330,369 square feet split into approximately 25,000-square-foot floorplates, the Longfellow spokesperson told CPE. Completed in November 2018, Durham.ID offers an outdoor courtyard, collaborative spaces, curated events and programming through Longfellow’s proprietary platform Elevate, and an eight-story parking facility with 1,225 spots, according to the spokesperson. Both buildings were able to achieve LEED Gold certification through its smart technology construction, installation of heat-reducing glass windows and other energy saving features.

The Longfellow spokesperson also told CPE that the Durham.ID office space is currently 83 percent occupied, while the company is in ongoing discussions with multiple prospective retail tenants for its 20,380 square feet of ground-floor space. In October, Longfellow secured another tenant for Durham.ID through a 25,000-square-foot lease with fintech company Spreedly.

Major mixed-use district

Longfellow is the owner and developer of the 1.8 million-square-foot Durham Innovation District, which will take several more years to complete. The project stretches 15 acres and includes 1 million square feet of new office and lab space, retail options, residential and hotel properties, as well as open space areas. Longfellow has found major tenants including Duke University, Duke Clinical Research Institute and Duda | Paine Architects, among others.