The Forum is the keystone component of a mixed-use development that includes luxury condominiums and apartments, dining, and retail.

ATLANTA—The Forum at West Paces, a class A office building in the South's most sought-after and established submarket—Buckhead, traded hands. Cousins Properties sold the office building to GLL Real Estate Partners.

“The Forum has experienced exceptional leasing momentum and solid rental rate growth, hence making it an attractive investment for core investors like GLL Real Estate Partners,” Will Yowell, CBRE vice chairman of Office Investment Properties, tells GlobeSt.com. “We anticipate continued strong capital flows into Atlanta's office market in 2017 due to the positive leasing momentum and rent growth the market has experienced recently. The Forum sale capped off a near record sales volume year for Atlanta office sales, totaling approximately $4 billion in trades, surpassing both 2015 and 2014 totals.”

Yowell, Jay O'Meara, and Justin Parsonnet, a CBRE market-leading investment sales platform in the Southeast, represented the seller. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“This asset offers an added security of more than seven years of average remaining lease term and nearly $60 million in contractual rental revenue over the next 10 years,” Yowell says. “This was an ideal profile for core capital sources exploring metro Atlanta and the Southeast.”

The Forum is the keystone component of a mixed-use development that includes luxury condominiums and apartments, dining, and retail. It's also central to a dense concentration of executive homes, four of the region's most highly sought after private schools, the city of Atlanta's newest public high school, and within three minutes of two Interstate 75 interchanges.

“The high-quality and prominent environment that surrounds this office building contributes significantly to its attractive Buckhead office address, and its popularity will continue for many years to come,” says O'Meara, CBRE senior vice president of Office Investment Properties. “GLL Real Estate Partners has a great opportunity to leverage this asset's recent momentum and it has experienced almost 120,000 square feet of leasing in the last two years while simultaneously increasing net rents by more than 20% during that time.”

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