Colorado Real Estate Journal - July 1, 2015
Wiens Real Estate Ventures is launching a $20 million speculative building at Arista that will deliver large blocks of Class A office space to a market with dwindling supply. The five-story, 82,000-squarefoot Arista Place II, which will include street-level retail, reignites office development in the 200-acre transit-oriented development in Broomfield. Arista Place I, a 111,160-sf office/retail building, was completed in 2008, and, “The office component of it has been 100 percent leased for several years now,” said Joe Zepeda Sr., project manager. “We continuously are getting calls about space availability, which we just don’t have,” he said. “The market on the corridor now is such that the availability of large blocks of Class A office space is really drying up.” The U.S. 36 corridor has less than a handful of office spaces of 50,000 sf or more, and tenants whose leases are expiring in the next two years are actively looking for options, according to Don Misner of JLL, who is preleasing Arista Place II’s office space with JLL’s Joe Heath. “What we’re seeing is tenants are getting out ahead of their lease expirations by 18 to 24 months now in order to allow time for new construction if they can’t find a home,” he said. Two other speculative office developments have been announced on the Denver-Boulder corridor: VanTrust Real Estate plans an approximately 190,000- sf Class A building in Interlocken Advanced Technology Environment, and Etkin Johnson Real Estate Partners is building Atria at Broomfield Corporate Center, which will have 173,380 sf of open-floor-plan space. Arista Place II, located on Main Street with retail, restaurants, a hotel, bus rapid-transit station, parking structure and the neighboring 1stBank Center, “is going to be the only new construction that has walkable amenities,” said Misner. “We think that it has a distinct advantage over the other locations,” he said. With office lease rates in Boulder hitting historic highs, the corridor is likely to see some users flee the city for the U.S. 36 corridor, where a flurry of investment sales activity is likely to boost rates by $1 or $2 per sf, according to Misner. “The delta between existing product and new construction is going to be decreased significantly,” he said. Arista Place II is scheduled for completion in June 2016. As the building is leased up, Wiens plans to launch a third building, Arista Place III. The company also is making plans for an additional 45 acres of land to house future office and retail development. “Construction activity at Arista was slowed during the recession, but since 2010, more than 1,250 residences have been built, a 90,000-square-foot hospital is under construction and a 68,000-square-foot medical office building is in planning.,” said Zepeda. “Arista overcame the hurdle of the recession and now the development is quickly evolving into everything we thought it could be,” added Tim Wiens, WREV principal. Jordan Wiens of Wiens Real Estate is responsible for retail leasing for the new building, which was designed by gkkworks. Pinkard Construction is the general contractor.