High-Tech Firms Begin Sizing Up $95M Las Colinas Campus

J. Holmes Davis IV, senior vice president for Philadelphia-based Binswanger/CBB, tells GlobeSt.com that several prospects already have toured the four-building facility at 6431 Longhorn Dr., a campus at the crossroads of two freeways and adjacent to the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. "It's just one of those facilities that you've got to match to the ideal user," he says about the Atmel Corp. campus, mothballed two years ago and brought to market in the past month.

The San Jose, CA-based Atmel bought the property in 1999 from Hitachi just three months after it hit the market. This time, it's likely to take longer. "Our goal is naturally to sell it within the year," Davis says. "Are we going to? I can't say that."

Davis says the lookers are eyeing a first-class facility with "significant abatements" from the region as well as the Texas Enterprise Fund, the same pool that's been winning deep-pocketed deals from competitors nationwide. "The good news is we have state and local help, which is different than when we marketed it in 1999," he says.

A worldwide hunt is under way for a traditional buyer in the semiconductor industry to "alternatives" like pharmaceutical companies and bio-med operations. "We're covering every base," Davis says. And though he's courting local and regional prospects, he thinks it will end up in the hands of an out-of-state corporation. Key to the marketing strategy is the facility can be brought on line in seven or eight months. "It would take two years to build this and $200 million to construct one like this," he says. "The building is a great driver."

The Atmel facility, designed to produce eight- and 12-inch wafers, has 179,787 sf of office space, a dozen docks with levelers, several state-of-the-art clean rooms and 16.8 acres of abutting developable land. The fully air-conditioned asset was built in stages from 1989 through early 1997.