LBA could close on both the Colorado State Bank building and the Oracle buildings at 7595 and 7601 Technology Way in the Denver Tech Center by the end of the month. The Tech Center buildings, which together have about 531,000 sf of prime space, are being listed by Trammell Crow. Joe Serieno, a broker with Trammell Crow, declined to comment. The buildings were built in 1997 and 2000 by J.D. Edwards, a company that was purchased by PeopleSoft. Soon after, PeopleSoft, was acquired in a hostile takeover by Oracle. Oracle then acquired the buildings.

The amount LBA is paying for the buildings on a per sf basis is difficult to calculate, source say, because the purchase includes 15 acres of prime land in the Tech Center. J.D. Edwards, near the peak of the tech boom in 1999, planned to develop a 22-story building on the land, but the plans were scrapped after the tech crash and the economy went south.

Still, LBA is buying the buildings below replacement cost in arguably the best business park in the metro area, where there is little land left for developing. The northside of the Tech Center, where the buildings are located, has shown great improvements in leasing this year. A mortgage subsidiary of locally based MDC Holdings, parent of Richmond Homes, and one of the nation's largest homebuilders, leases about 60,000 sf in one of the Oracle buildings. MDC's corporate headquarters is located in the DTC West, a former Invesco mutual fund building located across Interstate 25.