Titan Buys Building, Extends Lease With Tenant

The transaction will save HEI $500,000 annually in lease payments. The transaction was crafted by John Crowley, a corporate managing director in Studley's Denver office, and Derek Graham, a senior managing director in Studley's Los Angeles office.

"Our challenge was to find a way to reduce HEI's occupancy costs on a building that was part of the acquisition of Colorado Medtech in 2003 and that had eight-and-one-half years left on its lease," Crowley says. "Since the existing landlord was not willing to renegotiate the lease early, we carefully scrutinized the lease and uncovered a way to leverage our position to acquire the building for a competitive price."

"This building was not one that HEI wanted to leave," adds Graham, aninvestment sales specialist at Studley. "The facility is FDA-certified, which is necessary for HEI's business and would be a very costly to replicate had the firm been forced to move."

Kevin Kaseff, managing partner of Titan, says a "$500,000 annual cost reduction is substantial for a facility of this size." He says that he was impressed that the Studley team came up with such a creative lease structuring.

Mack Traynor, chief executive officer and president of HEI, says signing the lease with Titan is an important step in the firm's return to profitability and will allow the firm to have greater control over its facilities-related expenses.

Titan is a boutique real estate investment company, which acquires both stable and value-added properties. Titan seeks capital appreciation by acquiring, developing, redeveloping and managing office, industrial, residential and mixed-use assets throughout the US. The managing partners, Kevin Kaseff and Jeff Tabor, have successfully implemented this strategy since 1996 acquiring 45 commercial and multi-family properties valued at over $1 billion.

HEI designs, develops and manufactures microelectronics, subsystems, systems, connectivity and software solutions in the medical equipment and medical device, hearing and communications industries.