UBS' Shifting Strategy Drives Sale of 496,737-SF Tech-Flex Park

The 90%-occupied, 22-building buy encompasses 38 acres. Washburne, says Randy Baird of Cushman & Wakefield of Texas Inc., is "taking advantage of a temporary opportunity to acquire class A properties at pricing that's well below the levels we were seeing in the late '90s." Baird, part of the seller's negotiating team, won't tell GlobeSt.com what the 12-property holding brought at the closing table, but did say "it was a fair price in today's market."

Cushman & Wakefield's power team of Jack Fraker, Angelina Wright and Baird structured the buy-out for UBS Realty Investors of Hartford, CT. Baird says UBS, the park's owner for more than 15 years, is in the midst of shifting the ratios of its assets in core markets. Dallas-Fort Worth, he adds, remains on the investor's radar screen, but was earmarked for one of those regions where industrial product needed to be adjusted to meet the strategy shift. UBS owns upward of another 500,000 sf of industrial product in Dallas-Fort Worth, none of which is for sale at this time.

For Washburne, it leverages his large land holdings in the Telecom Corridor. It's definitely a strategic investment, Baird explains, since Washburne could tap his existing nearby acreage for build-to-suits for growing Arapaho Business Park tenants.

Some 10 bidders, institutional as well as private equity capital, were jockeying for the property. Its tenant roster includes Sanmina, VLSI and Stanford Micro Devices. The park is situated in and around Presidential, Columbia and Glenville streets.

The DFW market has Washburne dickering for other buys as the bid-ask spread narrows. In mid-January, he paid $14 million for the 147,300-sf Woodall Rodgers Tower at 1845 Woodall Rodgers Freeway in Dallas, negotiations that brought the final selling price to within $2 million of the asking price. Washburne, owner of Charter Holdings, represented himself in the negotiations.