W.P. Carey Buys Raytheon Office Building for $19M

By Balazs Szekely, Associate Editor

A real estate investment trust recently acquired a 143,650 square-foot Class A office building currently leased to one of The Raytheon Company’s main business divisions.

The division, Raytheon Missile Systems, is the largest of Raytheon’s six operating segments and the largest private employer in the Tucson area.

The southside asset was sold to W. P. Carey Inc. W.P.Carey purchased the property on behalf of CPA:17– Global, one of its managed REITs from Summit Properties of Seattle. W. P. Carey is a global net lease REIT specializing in corporate sale-leaseback financing, build-to-suit financing and the acquisition of single-tenant net-lease properties. The company also acts as the manager to a series of non-traded REITs. At the end of last year, its owned and managed portfolio had a combined value of around $15 billion.

Located on a 10.3 acre site a few corners from the airport, in the Tucson South submarket at 3350 E. Hemisphere Loop, the fully occupied building is the defense contractor’s corporate headquarters. Colliers International brokered the transaction worth $18.95 million, which marks the largest office investment sale in Tucson by square footage of the past six years, since January 2008.

The company has also purchased a corporate headquarters/research and development facility located in New Concord, Ohio and a manufacturing facility in Bluffton, Ind. Both are currently under lease agreement with automotive heavy gauge thermoformed products designer and manufacturer PendaForm Co. for a period of 20 years and have been sold for an aggregate of approximately $8 million.

Photo credits: W. P. Carey Inc.