Corporate Campus Sells for $23.5M

CB Richard Ellis brokers Will Yowell and Justin Parsonnet negotiated for the church.

The 85%-leased, class B property was purchased by an investment partnership comprised of locally based Ackerman & Co., Coro Realty Advisors and Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. for $23.5 million, or $80.20 per sf. The seller, Property Reserve Inc., a Salt Lake City-based affiliate of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had owned the 60-tenant, 20-acre asset since 1979.

In 1988, the Mormon Church paid $8 million or $27.59 per sf for the second-phase, four-building portion of the campus, according to locally based Databank.

"The property hasn't yet achieved its highest and best use by far," an Atlanta broker intimate with the commercial/retail market on Hammond Drive near the Perimeter Mall, tells GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity. "It could be converted to either an A office product, retail or multifamily use in the near future."

If it remains a B product with asking rents in the $16-to-$17-per-sf-range, Corporate Campus tenants will be enjoying lower-than-market rents when developers Equity Office, Prudential, TMW and other rivals erect their proposed class A office structures, brokers say. Class A office rents are in the $24 to $26-per-sf range. HealthSouth Corp. is the largest Corporate Campus tenant with 30,000 sf of leased quarters.

"There are at least five major [commercial] developments on the drawing board for this strategic sector" of Atlanta, another broker familiar with the submarket tells GlobeSt.com.