Colorado Real Estate Journal - March 4, 2015
An 83,058-square-foot office/ flex building in the heart of Inverness Business Park traded to an Arizona company for $8.03 million. Tucson-based Diamond Ventures purchased 373 Inverness from ScanlanKemberBard Cos., which substantially renovated the property and signed leases last year with two of the largest tenants, Ampio Pharmaceuticals and Rockwell Automation. Overall occupancy was 81.5 percent at the time of the sale. “This is our company’s first acquisition in the Denver area. We’re very excited about it,” said Bill Kelley, Diamond Ventures chief financial officer. “We love the location. We love the quality of the building. We think it’s a very unique design,” he said. Kelley said 373 Inverness offers an attractive combination of office and flex space as well as income going forward, and Diamond Ventures is optimistic about the opportunity to lease up the last 15,000 sf of space. “We think it’s a really welllocated property, and the interior improvements are nice,” he said. In addition, 373 Inverness is just off Interstate 25 and County Line Road, within walking distance of a light-rail station and the Inverness Golf Course. “It just feels like a very good place for an employer to locate,” he said. Geoff Baukol, senior vice president in CBRE’s Investment Properties group in Denver, said 373 Inverness drew strong investor interest. “What drove the activity was a very, very welllocated asset that was across the street from the Colorado Athletic Club-Inverness and all the amenities that are in Inverness,” he said. The building provides walkability not only to light rail but also to Park Meadows shopping center via a pedestrian walkway over Interstate 25. Investors also were attracted to the fact that the building has long-term leases in place as well as upside. “The ability to lease up the last remaining suite and achieve full stability added to the attractiveness of the offering,” said Baukol, who handled the transaction. SKB has acquired the property from Commonwealth REIT as part of a portfolio deal about 1½ years ago. “We executed a strategy to do some capital improvements to the asset and perform lease-up, and we got it to the point that it made sense now to sell the asset,” said Rich Morean of SKB. Ampio occupies just over 19,000 sf, while Rockwell Automation leases more than 15,000 sf. The building’s largest tenant is Hope Online Learning Academy, an online charter school that has its offices in about 26,000 sf. The two-story building was built in 1984. Diamond Ventures is a privately held real estate investment and development company that owns office and retail assets in Tucson, Phoenix and Flagstaff, Arizona, as well as the 146,215-sf Tech Center II office building in Colorado Springs. The company likes the office sector right now because rents haven’t risen to the point that there is not a lot of speculative construction, said Kelley. Cushman & Wakefield of Colorado will manage 373 Inverness. David Lee and his team at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank will handle leasing. “We’re excited about doing business in Denver,” said Kelley. “Denver is a very dynamic area.”