Aussies Pay $71M for Stadium Gateway

The transaction represents what Macquarie calls "a strategic geographic re-weighting to strong US office markets," according to Simon Jones, CEO of Macquarie Office Management LTD. As part of that strategy and in a separate deal, it is selling two Dallas properties owned in a venture with Equity Office Properties. Macquarie's US adviser is Principal Real Estate Investors, which brought the deal to Macquarie on behalf of one of its associates. The Stadium Gateway building, at 1900 S. State College Blvd. adjacent to the Angels' baseball stadium, was completed in 2001 and is 100% occupied, with a weighted average lease term of five years. Jones says Macquarie liked the leasing profile of the building, where the rate of expiration of leases in coming years is relatively low in an office market where leasing has been gaining momentum and rental rates have been rising.

Seller Principal Real Estate Investors is a member of the Des Moines-based Principal Financial Group. It bought the Stadium Gateway about two years ago from a partnership of Summit Commercial Properties of El Segundo, Mack-Cali Realty Corp. of Cranford, NJ and an East Coast financial institution. The six-story office building is part of the city of Anaheim's master-planned, mixed-use development for the area around the baseball stadium near the intersection of the I-5 Freeway and state highways 57 and 22.