$500,000 Rehab Brews for Foreclosed Building

The Chicago-based CMD Realty Investors let Parkview Place at 524 E. Lamar slip into a foreclosure and hit the auction block in early July, with the successful all-cash bid "north of $3 million" coming from an Arlington-based investment group, Foster-Fishcreek LP. CMD Realty did not return a telephone call for comment prior to publication.

The obstacle that must be overcome is shedding a single-tenant image in the marketplace, Gary Walker, president of SCM Real Estate Services in Arlington, tells GlobeSt.com. LSG Sky Chefs occupied all but 8,000 sf of the 91,696 sf until April, when it officially moved the last of its world headquarters to a new office building in Las Colinas. Arlington and CMD fought a hard battle to convince Sky Chefs to stay, but the grass was greener on the other side of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Walker, who had the assignment before and after the foreclosure, says CMD let it go back to the lender "because it was single tenant." It's been a number of years since a class A building in Arlington has been sold on the courthouse steps and the move was "highly unusual," he says.

As Walker and SCM's Theron Bryant float proposals, the new owners are meeting with designers to game out a $500,000-plus retooling. Built in 1985, Parkview Place will be outfitted with brushed granite in the lobby, new elevator cabs, common area makeovers and upper floors stripped of a large cooler and test kitchen, then reconfigured for office use. Exterior upgrades will include lights and landscape.

The lone tenant, Teletrac Inc., will stay put in its first-floor offices, according to Walker. Teletrac, based in Garden Grove, CA, has held its space for the last eight years as Sky Chefs "morphed" the building's standing from multi-tenant to single-tenant while it grew into the world's largest in-flight food provider for the airlines industry.

The SCM leasing team has jumped into the fray for a 32,000-sf deal and is still part of the chase for a 50,000-sf tenant who's been in the market for nine months. Just last week, an insurance company toured, offering the promise of 40,000 sf and "new blood" for the region, Walker says. Meanwhile, the owners intend to backfill some space with their related businesses, bring back the building's deli and reinstate the manned security desk.

The three-story building is one of the few in Arlington with class A space in such large floor plates, data center fiber optics and a backup diesel generator. About 24,000 sf is open on the first floor; the upper floors measure 31,000 sf and 36,000 sf. Walker is quoting $16.50 per sf full-service, a price that he says is $1 per sf to $1.50 per below market. "We expect to be half occupied...either in there or signed in six months," he says with confidence.