Janus Building Fetches Record Price Per SF

Janus is the anchor office tenant in the Clayton Lane project on a former Sears Roebuck & Co. parking lot developed by local developer Randy Nichols. The CB Richard Ellis investment team of Mary Sullivan, Ron Urgitus and Tim Swan handled the sale. Janus holds a 15-year lease on the building, with an option to extend, making the class A building extremely attractive to institutional investors.

Clayton Lane also includes the only JW Marriott in the state, a Crate & Barrel, some of the most expensive condominium units in Denver and a large parking garage. They were not part of the sale. Indeed, Nichols' company retained ownership of the retail space on the ground floor of the Janus building.

Last fall, UBS Brinson Realty Advisors, a subsidiary of United Bank of Switzerland, planned to buy the building for the same price paid by RECP. When the deal with UBS collapsed, RECP stepped up to the plate.

RECP typically looks to buy buildings for a long-term hold that have stable income and high-quality tenants. In other words, it describes the Janus building to a tee. It looks for buildings in first-tier cities such as New York, Washington, DC, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles priced from $150 million to $250 million.

On a day-to-date operation, RECP is directed by Robert L. Kinney and Karin E. Shewer, who previously served as president and senior vice president, respectively, of Mellon Real Estate Investment Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Mellon Bank. During their tenure at Mellon Real Estate, that pension fund advisory firm grew to $1.2 billion in assets and employed a staff of more than 50.

Investors with RECP include Harald Quandt Holdings, a German family holding company with a globally diversified investment portfolio, including investment advisory activities for third parties; OIK, a full-service real estate investment advisor for German insurance companies and pension funds; BHF Immobilien, GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of ING BHF-BANK Aktiengesellschaft, a huge Dutch financial institution; FB Recap, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Franz and Frieder Burda; and MD Sass Investors Services, Inc., an investment management firm offering investments in traditional stock, bond balanced and cash management strategies and an array of alternative strategies including distressed securities, real estate, arbitrage, tax liens market neutral and multi-strategy portfolios.