Commercial Real Estate Quarterly
Real estate roundup

Virginia Business
December 2005

New retail development
Just in time for the holidays, Yankee Candle Co. Inc. opened a flagship store in Williamsburg last month. The concept promotes more than the company’s scented candles. The $14 million, 43,000-square-foot-project on Richmond Road hopes to be a retail destination. It includes an indoor village with a clock tower, a cloud-filled sky which morphs into a starry sky at night, a general store, café, real ice pond and places for interactive activities such as candle-dipping. The Williamsburg store is the company’s second flagship project; the first one opened in South Deerfield, Mass.

Tenant trends
Forget a plush lobby or high-tech security system. The most popular building amenity in Southern commercial real estate markets is something far more basic. Food services were cited most frequently by Richmond tenants as well as tenants in Jacksonville, Tampa and Dallas during a recent national survey done by Black’s Guide. Other highlights from the survey:
• Biggest challenge to leasing: Lack of parking
• Industry leasing the most commercial space: banking and finance. Research and development industries came in second.
• Development trends: Office condos, mixed use projects, waterfront development

New retail development
Just in time for the holidays, Yankee Candle Co. Inc. opened a flagship store in Williamsburg last month. The concept promotes more than the company's scented candles. The $14 million, 43,000-square-foot-project on Richmond Road hopes to be a retail destination. It includes an indoor village with a clock tower, a cloud-filled sky which morphs into a starry sky at night, a general store, café, real ice pond and places for interactive activities such as candle-dipping. The Williamsburg store is the company's second flagship project; the first one opened in South Deerfield, Mass.

NCS Pearson Inc. has leased 123,200 square feet for a call center at River's Bend Center in Chesterfield County. The Northern Virginia company will operate a call center to support the federal government's Medicare hotline that will employ 800 people. Thalhimer/Cushman & Wakefield handled lease negotiations for the landlord, Liberty Property Trust.

Financing
Fairfield Inn and Suites, a new Virginia Beach oceanfront hotel, has received a $12 million permanent financing loan from John B. Levy & Co. of Richmond. The loan carries a 10-year term and 25-year amortization. The borrower, Virginia-Beach based Tidewater Hotels & Resorts, owns and operates more than 2,300 hotel rooms in Virginia and North Carolina. John Levy, president of John B. Levy & Co., is seeing an increased level of activity in the hotel market. "We are almost seeing one hotel deal a week, and lenders now view hotels more favorably, for all product types, and the increased competition is proving beneficial for clients," says Levy. The nine-story Fairfield Inn and Suites is at 1901 Atlantic Ave. and has 114 rooms and 28 suites.

Sales
Richmond real estate investor Charles J. Keck has purchased the north end - 416,939 square feet - of the former Best Products distribution center on U.S. Route 1 in Ashland. Value City will lease about 146,185 square feet of the space for an expanded East Coast distribution center. Porter Realty Co. represented the seller, and C. Jacob Keck Realtors represented Keck. The building's north end is situated on about 16 acres. Keck also is acquiring the southern part of the building, on another 15 acres, from The Supply Room Cos.

Leases
Brookfield Asset Management (formerly known as Brascan Corp.) has selected the Norfolk office of CB Richard Ellis to manage and lease a portfolio of six office/flex buildings in Norfolk and Chesapeake, totaling more than 650,000 square feet. The portfolio's major tenants include Federal Express and the U.S. government. Three of the buildings are in the Greenbrier area of Chesapeake, and three others are in Norfolk Commerce Park. Brookfield, with offices in Toronto, New York and London, is a specialist asset manager with $40 billion of assets under management, including 70 office properties and 130 generating plants.