Regions

Los Angeles’ newest “it” industry may sport companies with unfamiliar names, but Charles Dunn Co. senior managing director Eugene Page is glad they are calling Los Angeles home. While some financial services firms are returning space to the market, electronic-gaming firms and entertainment companies continue to take down significant chunks of Los Angeles office space. “These electronic-gaming companies are creating a lot of jobs,” Page said. A year ago, he knows of a Korean computer-gaming firm that leased a 23,000-square-foot floor to a company that employed two people. A year later, the company’s staffers fill the entire floor. And Fox Interactive Media…

Despite a difficult environment for accessing debt for commercial real estate projects, about $25 million in construction financing has been secured for MetraMarket, a retail development in Chicago’s West Loop. U.S. Equities Realty, the project’s Chicago-based developer, says that the 100,000-square-foot MetraMarket (pictured) will get under way sometime next month. Located within the Ogilvie Transportation Center complex–also known as Northwestern Station–the development will sport street-level shops and restaurants in two currently underutilized city blocks between Washington, Lake, Canal and Clinton streets. The development will be under the 16 rail lines of the station, which are elevated at that point. Ogilvie…

Clark Construction Group-California has commenced work on University Gateway, a 421-unit mixed-use student housing development in Los Angeles, just across from the University of Southern California. Operating under a $134 million contract, Clark is building the project on behalf of Urban Partners L.L.C., which, along with equity associates Real Estate Capital Partners and Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, secured a construction loan and joint venture equity for the upscale project totaling $167.5 million in late July. Commercial real estate and capital markets services provider Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P. orchestrated the financing deal, securing the fully underwritten construction loan from Wells Fargo’s…

Redevelopment of the site that was once home to the Borscht Belt’s legendary Concord Hotel, in Kiamesha Lake, N.Y., has taken two major steps forward. In one, Concord Associates L.P., joint venture partner of Empire Resorts Inc., has completed a $225 million equity loan financing with Entertainment Properties Trust, a REIT based in Kansas City. In the other, the County of Sullivan (N.Y.) Industrial Development Agency has announced a $300 million bond financing for the resort’s redevelopment, the agency’s first major funding for the $1.1 billion project. In its prime, the Concord Hotel was one of the largest in the…

For most of the country, this will be a long weekend, but for residents of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans in particular, it will be a long wait. As of shortly after noon Eastern time today, Tropical Storm Gustav was just off Jamaica and heading almost due northwest, its most likely path, according to the National Hurricane Center, bringing it to landfall just west of New Orleans on Tuesday morning. Although Gustav is not yet officially a hurricane, according to the hurricane center’s latest bulletin, “Strengthening is likely during the next couple of days, and Gustav is expected to…

Seattle-based Columbia Pacific has closed its second round of financing for Columbia Asia, the money management firm’s hospital consortium, adding $135 million to bring the fund’s total amount of equity raised to $325 million. Columbia Asia develops and operates hospitals in Asia, having made its debut in 1994 with the opening of a property in Malaysia. The company presently operates 13 medical facilities in India, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia, and the new investments will fuel the development of more. The group behind the Columbia Asia Fund includes the Baty Family of Seattle as principal investor, and individuals and families based…

Developer Horizon Properties has received a $74 million forward permanent loan for the just-completed two-building, 384,000-square-foot corporate headquarters for CONSOL Energy Inc. in Canonsburg, Pa., a Pittsburgh suburb.The 10-year, fixed-rate financing was arranged by the Pittsburgh office of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P. through Nationwide Life Insurance Co. Mark Popovich, managing director of HFF’s Pittsburgh office, told CPN that Nationwide committed to the loan around the time construction on the buildings began, in December 2006, and held to the agreed-on terms despite the gyrations in the credit markets since then. CONSOL is leasing both buildings, a three-story, 75,000-square-foot facility and a…

Four wellness centers operated by Life Time Fitness Inc. have come under the ownership of Senior Housing Properties Trust, courtesy of a $100 million deal. Life Time Fitness will continue to occupy the properties under a triple-net lease agreement through its subsidiary, LTF Real Estate Co. The deal calls for the company to pay SNH rent totaling $9.1 million per-year, in addition to fixed increases over the life of the lease, which is scheduled to expire in 2028. The assets account for a total of nearly 460,000 square feet in Georgia, Illinois, Nebraska and Texas.Developed between 2005 and 2007 the…

Los Angeles-based Maguire Properties Inc. has closed the disposition of Main Plaza, selling the 607,000-square-foot trophy office complex in Irvine, Calif., to Shorenstein Properties L.L.C for $211 million including the assumption of $161 million of project level financing. The transaction reached completion two months after the parties entered into the agreement, and leaves Maguire with net proceeds totaling $48 million to be used for debt reduction and general corporate purposes. Maguire revealed in June that reducing debt through the sale of certain Orange County assets would be one component of its multi-faceted plan to revitalize the company, which has seen…

Los Angeles-based Wilshire Finance Partners has introduced Wilshire Income Fund II, its second real estate mortgage pool fund. The fund will raise $100 million to make commercial property loans. This time around, however, the company will be able to welcome investors and borrowers from beyond the borders of the State of California. Wilshire Income Fund II, like the first vehicle, is designed to tap into a market hungry for alternative lending sources in the face of a credit crisis and diminishing property values. The fund consists of several well-underwritten trust deed loans; investors purchase shares of the fund, and money…