$16M Buys Last Piece to 1M-SF Campus

Countrywide is using the research and development building for a back-office facility to complement a one-million-sf footprint in Plano's Legacy Business Park on the other side of the metroplex. The home mortgagor spent about two years looking for a location in a different part of town so it would have a wider labor pool to tap for an operation that could employ 2,000 workers. The initial move-in brought a relocation of 120 employees to 5401 N. Beach St. in the Fossil Creek Business Park at the junction of Interstates 35W 820.

Berkeley Investments bought the 99-acre campus in December 2002, striking a leaseback agreement with the Schaumburg, IL-based Motorola for a 665,000-sf building and then started looking for takers for a trio of eight-year-old office/flex buildings. The first to go was a 12,000-sf, operating day-care center bought in May 2003 by Woodcrest Capital LLC. Two months later, HRPT Properties Trust of Newton, MA stepped in to close on a 665,000-sf structure fully leased to Motorola.

Paul R. Moser with Stream Realty Partners LP in Irving tells GlobeSt.com that he was hired to lease the R&D building when Countrywide came along and offered to buy the 41-acre asset with a 4,400-sf cafeteria, warehouse space and all the bells and whistles that one would expect in a facility that once housed the electronic giant's Personal Communications Systems Division. The transaction was timed to close after the calendar flipped, he says.

Berkeley Investments had its vice president of asset management, Steven Brooks, and Moser negotiating its interests while Countrywide used its longtime Los Angeles brokers, Jim Travers and Steve Eyler of Travers Realty, to do its talking for the off-market deal. Eyler says Countrywide has no plan to shift the Calabasas, CA headquarters to Texas despite the significant market presence.