Office Trio Taps 50,724 SF of Top-Tier Space in Downtown, Uptown

Crescent Real Estate Equities Co. held tight to a 96% occupancy in the 1.2-million-sf Fountain Place at 1445 Ross Ave. in the CBD, thanks to a longtime tenant doing a straight-up renewal for a full floor or 35,937 sf of trophy space. The sweet spot of the deal-making is that the Environmental Protection Agency is turning a five-year residency on the eighth floor into a 13-year commitment that will now run co-terminus with its other seven floors or roughly 240,000 sf for an ending date in 2017, Kirby White, Crescent's director of leasing, tells GlobeSt.com.

The signing caps seven months of talks with Sherrie Johnson of the General Services Administration, the federal government's bargaining arm. The new deal takes effect April 1, right on the tail of the old pact's expiration.

Kirby, who brokered the deal, says the EPA signing wraps up the 2004 roll in a class AA high-rise with quoted rates of $23.50 per sf to $26.50 per sf net plus electric and an occupancy that has not dipped below 95% since 1995. "It's been a really good run," he says, adding the next leases to turn are two years out.

In Uptown, Harris Nesbitt, the US-based investment arm of the BMO Financial Group, will flip on lights next week in a 4,000-sf office on the 14th floor of 2100 McKinney. The Chicago-based tenant tapped Dallas as the gateway for a Southwest US office, penning a 5.5-year, stair-stepped lease for the 99%-occupied, 350,155-sf structure, says Patrick Nugent of Trammell Crow Co.

Nugent says a Chicago team spent a day in town, surveying the city's finest buildings. "Our class A-plus space was almost laid out perfect for them," Nugent says of the 19-story building, "and we were able to get them in quickly." With a quoted rate ranging from $28 per sf to $30 per sf, all Nugent will say about the economic package is that "it was appropriate for that property." Nugent represented Harris Nesbitt while Trammell Crow's Matt Craft laid out the terms for the building owner, a New York City-based limited partnership.

Coming in April to Uptown is FKP Architects Inc., a Houston-based firm that's shifting the Dallas office from Walnut Glen Tower to 3535 Travis, a 96%-occupied, class B-plus building in a class AA neighborhood. The firm signed a seven-year lease for the 116,309-sf building, with a quoted rent of $17.50 per sf.

FKP Architects specializes in today's hottest field, health-care design as well as research, hospitality and educational architecture. Justin Miller in the Dallas office for Transwestern Commercial Services Inc. represented the building owner, KBS Realty Advisors of Newport Beach, CA while Brad Selner of Dallas-based Staubach Co. negotiated on the tenant's behalf.