|
Most significant real estate transactions of 2004
Virginia Business
April
2005
Project: Chamberlin Hotel
Location: Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads
Key player: Drucker & Falk LLC
Description: The sale of
the 280-room Chamberlin, a historic landmark in Hampton
Roads, offering a panoramic view of the area’s
bustling harbor. Sitting on 4,970 acres at Fort Monroe,
the hotel dates back to the early 1800s and is listed
on the federal and Virginia registers of historic places.
This deal entailed marketing an older hotel on an Army
base with limited public access, which had had its power
shut down for six months and whose seller was bankrupt.
Challenges of the deal and economic
impact: A small group of investors associated with Drucker
& Falk’s senior housing management decided
to buy the hotel and convert it to an independent-living
retirement community, focusing on military retirees.
The group plans to spend $25 million during the next
18 months rehabilitating the hotel. Putting the deal
together required General Assembly approval for a change
of use for the building and a new, long-term lease with
the Department of the Army. Throw in a bankruptcy hearing
and a property that had fallen into disrepair, and it’s
obvious that the company’s persistence came into
play while wrapping up this transaction. The deal has
the potential to make a grand old property shine again.
Project: Capital One Office Park
Location: West Broad Street, Glen Allen
Key player: RER/New Boston West Broad Street
LLC
Description: The purchase
of two five-story office buildings by RER/New Boston
totaling 453,660 square feet on a 39-acre site. The
buildings are currently occupied by Capital One’s
Operations Center and Card Center. The purchase price
was $16 million. The buyer is a joint venture of RER
Equities Inc. of Herndon and the New Boston Fund of
Boston.
Challenges of the deal and economic
impact: Henrico County was faced with the loss of about
2,000 workers as Capital One prepared to leave the buildings
and relocate employees to a new corporate campus in
Goochland County. RER/New Boston negotiated a 15-month
leaseback arrangement with Capital One. This transaction
gave RER time to negotiate with another company that
plans to lease one of the buildings upon Capital One’s
departure. The deal retains a corporate park with a
prime location off I-64, enabling the county to replace
jobs that will be lost.
Project: Margaret Brent Elementary
School and Mountain View High School
Location: Stafford County
Key player: Haskell/Hess P3 Schools
Description: The first
multischool project in Virginia developed under the
Public-Private Education Facilities and Infrastructure
Act of 2002. The legislation allows private companies
to partner with state and local governments in building
needed infrastructure.
Challenges of the deal and economic
impact: Fast-growing Stafford County needed new schools
to keep up with increasing student enrollment. Seven
companies responded to the county’s solicitation,
and the Haskell-Hess team from Maryland and Florida
was selected. It sold a portion of county-owned land
for a senior living facility, netting $1.8 million,
almost the cost of the 150-acre tract purchased by the
school system five years earlier. Land was also set
aside for a YMCA with the idea of creating a community
that could make multiple use of the facilities. The
high school will have access to the pool and some of
the Y’s recreational facilities, while the senior
living center could provide volunteers for the elementary
school. Built at a cost of $12.9 million, the Margaret
Brent Elementary School contains 88,000 square feet
and came in at less than the average cost of an elementary
school in Virginia. Construction began last year on
the $36.3 million, 270,000-square-foot Mountain View
High School and should be complete by the start of the
2005-06 school year.
Project: Wal-Mart Distribution
Center
Location: Williamsburg
Key players: Wal-Mart Distribution Centers, Sperry
Van Ness
Description: In 2000, a
local partnership sold 161 acres in the 800-acre GreenMount
Industrial Park to Wal-Mart Stores East LP, and the
company built a 2 million-square-foot distribution center.
Three years later, Wal-Mart wanted to buy 250 more acres
to expand the center. The brokerage company Sperry Van
Ness negotiated the sale, getting a higher land price
for the owners — $22,000 an acre as compared to
the $15,000 an acre Wal-Mart had paid earlier. Now with
a total of 3 million square feet under one roof, the
development is the largest distribution center on the
Peninsula.
Challenges of the deal and economic
impact: The development has had a big impact on James
City County, with the distribution center employing
nearly 500 people. At one point negotiations with Wal-Mart
nearly deadlocked as the complicated deal involved wetlands
concerns, archeological issues and access questions.
A Sperry Van Ness broker researched ocean transit times
and overland market access times so he could promote
the advantages of GreenMount’s location.
|
