"I liked the fact that it's a great location in a wonderful park," Barry Gabel, a senior vice president in Phoenix for Trammell Crow Co., tells GlobeSt.com. "It's a very conducive park for high-end office users. This particular project had visibility from Interstate 10, with additional land for expansion. The building has great renovation potential."

First National seems to think so too since it plans to use the 1665 W. Alameda Dr. location in Tempe for its mortgage and bank operations and technical group. Built in the 1970s, the single-story building sits on 27 acres.

According to Gabel, the property never actively hit the market. The seller, Fountainhead Park LLC of Bloomington, IL, was marketing the property for lease, but he knew First National was interested in becoming an owner-user of a Tempe office product, and contacted Birtcher Arizona, the seller's representative, to negotiate an off-market sale.

Headquartered in Scottsdale, First National Bank of Arizona will stage a phased move-in to the building, but plans no leases to third parties in the meantime, says Gabel, who along with TCC's Mindy Korth, Dave Seeger, Karsten Peterson and Mark Gustin and John Maus and David Beckham, both with Univest Development Services LLC of Scottsdale, represented First National Bank of Arizona. Ted Rabban of Birtcher Arizona LLC represented the seller.