"It's one of the quickest deals that I've ever done," Phil Puckett, principal with Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co., tells GlobeSt.com of the four-week turn. "It grew from one floor to two floors to 2 1/2 floors." And it's a homegrown firm, Adea Solutions Inc., taking down 67,000 sf--all that Cap Gemini had available in One Panorama Center at 7701 Las Colinas Ridge. Adea has spent six months in the market for a top-tier block to house corporate offices and development labs plus get room to grow.

The privately held Adea, planning a June 30 move, took the top two floors in an eight-story building and will split the third floor with Cap Gemini, which is keeping keys to the sixth floor and now packing for the move from the other floors. Adea got as-is space marketed at $16.50 per sf plus electric. The furniture was negotiated as well. In comparison, the quoted direct rate is $23 per sf in the 94%-leased, 208,701-sf building overseen by Transwestern Commercial Services.

"We are taking advantage of a number of market dynamics, including the availability of cost-efficient real estate, to position us for long-term profitable growth," Abid H. Abedi, Adea's chairman and CEO, said in a press release. The eight-year-old Adea will exit its founding site, 27,000 sf in Heritage Square I at 5485 LBJ Freeway, along with 30,000 sf of lab space at 5420 LBJ Freeway.

Two days ago, Adea hired the locally based Capstar Commercial Real Estate Services to sublease the 1.5-floor headquarters space in Heritage Square I, where three years remain on the term. The nearby 30,000-sf spot is a sublease that's nearing its expiration, says Capstar vice president Trey Smith, who's partnering with associate Clint Madison for the assignment.

Smith says Heritage Square building owner, the Carlisle Group of Washington, DC, has given clearance to work a direct deal on the back end to sublease the soon-to-be-vacated, class B space. The effective rate for the sublease will be $13 per sf while the back-end rate will be $17 per sf to $17.50 per sf, full service, Smith says.

The story behind the move is Adea needed to expand and wanted to do it under one roof. The two-building, 357,000-sf Heritage Square is 95% leased. "We just didn't have any extra space to offer them," Smith says of a search confined to the LBJ Corridor until recently.

"They extended their boundaries a little bit and I'm glad they did," Puckett says. "That was one of the biggest sublease dispositions in the US for Cap Gemini." The space was on the sublease market about a year, with prospects few and far between. The deal eliminated 99% of the space around town that Cap Gemini inherited from the buyout of E&Y's consulting group.

Mark Daily in NAI Stoneleigh Huff Brous McDowell's Dallas office represented Adea, which had a 70% growth rate last year and is the largest privately held IT solutions provider in Dallas/Fort Worth. It employs more than 1,300 in the US and abroad and expects to add up to 200 more technology jobs by yearend.