DALLAS—Buchanan Street Partners is making a big investment in Texas. The Newport Beach, Calif.-based firm has acquired Granite Tower, a 10-story, 240,000-square-foot office building in North Dallas. And reps for the company say it has three Texas deals in the pipeline – two more in Dallas and one in San Antonio.

“We have had a successful track record of investing in DFW and are attracted to the region's job growth history, its current employment prospects and its overall quality of life,” Bob Dougherty, partner at Buchanan Street, told GlobeSt.com. “The opportunity to buy assets at a substantial discount to projected replacement cost serves as a hedge against the area's ever-present over-building risk.”

Buchanan Street acquired the building, currently 97 percent leased, on behalf of an unnamed pension plan from a partnership between CREA Investments and Macfarlan Capital Partners. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

The company aims to benefit from the property's high occupancy rate and stable cash flow while nearby LBJ Freeway improvements are completed, and it is banking on the fact that the building will serve as an affordable alternative to the nearby Galleria and North Dallas Tollway submarkets.

While the Granite Tower investment was Buchanan Street's first in the Dallas area since it sold Riverside Commons in Las Colinas to Research in Motion in 2009, it is clear the company has a renewed interest in the region.

“Buchanan Street's strategy for the DFW region is to acquire office and industrial properties valued at $25-$150 million, with a core plus to value-add risk profile,” says Dougherty. “The firm generally seeks to create value through lease-up, marking rents to an accelerating market, with the addition of modest renovations and repositionings.”

The firm acquired Granite Tower with five-year fixed-rate financing provided by a Midwest life insurance company through HFF, who acted as the mortgage broker in the transaction. The property will continue to be managed and leased by DTZ.

“As for the plan for 2015,” Dougherty added, “We'd be comfortable making two to three investments in DFW in 2015 and ultimately owning 800,000-1 million square feet, in order to realize operating efficiencies and be viewed as a meaningful player by the brokerage community.”