ANNAPOLIS-Corporate Office Properties Trust has inked a lease with a tenant to occupy all of 312 Sentinel Way, an office building under construction at The National Business Park in Annapolis Junction.
The REIT recently completed shell construction on the 125,000 square foot, Class-A office, with the goal of having the tenant occupy the space in the first quarter of 2015.
The lease means that COPT's 1.5 million square foot construction pipeline is now 82% pre-leased, up from 74% at June 30, 2013. Roger A. Waesche, Jr., COPT's president and CEO notes that the lease was secured despite the cuts to the federal budget that went into effect in the wake of the Budget Control Act of 2011.
That is quite a turnaround from a month ago when, during the REIT's second quarter earnings call, executives indicated the company might have to take back a potential 50,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet of space from tenants.
Steve Riffee, EVP and CFO, said during the earnings call that one is a 150,000 square foot lease of which 103,000 will be extended and roughly 50,000 is up in the air. Another lease could produce about 30,000 square feet over the next two quarters, he said. The reason: budget cuts and the sequestration.
Now, Waesche says: "…this lease at [312 Sentinel Way] brings our total new development leasing, since year-end 2011, to 1.9 million square feet."
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Erika Morphy
Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.
