$80M Plus Will Take Majority Stake in Centura Tower I

"We had three or four serious buyers interested in the deal," says Scott Porter, senior vice president and director of leasing and asset management for Dallas-based Prime Income Asset Management LLC, overseer for nearly $2.2 billion of real estate owned by Transcontinental Investors and American Realty Investors Inc. He tells GlobeSt.com that Transcontinental will hold fast to a minority interest and remain a general partner for the 15-story Centura Tower I at 14185 Dallas Parkway. He says recently financed debt with New York City-headquartered MetLife Inc. will stay in place.

"This was an opportunity that allows us to take equity and use it somewhere else," Porter says, "and still be in control of the property. We're opportunistic real estate investors and we always try to buy for the upside. When you have a property that you think has reached its potential for you, you sell it...We're not coupon investors."

Centura Tower I, built on 2.3 acres in 2001, is assessed at $45 million by Dallas County. Occupancy is pushing 95%. Its new lead tenant, Coca-Cola Enterprises, is just about ready to walk through the door to 119,000 sf on four floors, which it leased for the next decade. Porter says Remington Hotel Corp. is planning to add 3,500 sf to its 26,000-sf office and a couple other deals are "coming in from the street."

The soon-to-close transaction for Centura Tower I is one of several that Prime Income has set into play of late. "We've been massaging the portfolio," Porter says, adding the company is in various stages of due diligence for replacement properties, including some in Dallas/Fort Worth. Prime Income is one of several interlocking companies under the umbrella of a trust that benefits the children of Gene E. Phillips, a Dallas investor who's reputed to be one of the largest commercial real estate stakeholders in the metroplex.

In recent weeks, Prime Income started working through a triple sale of a class A office portfolio in North Virginia to Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. So far, deeds have rolled to the 110,000-sf One Steeplechase in Dulles and 60,000-sf Chuck Yeager Building in Chantilly. Still to come is the closing for the 65,000-sf Corporate Pointe, also in Chantilly.

Prime Income also is poised to sell the 44,029-sf Wilshire Medical Center at 9033 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills, CA. The asset is the last of five to be sold in the Dallas investment group's California, according to Porter.