GlobeSt.com EXCLUSIVE: Griffin Capital Closes $60M Office Deal

The Atlanta property was built in 1987 and renovated in 2001. The two major tenants in the 10-tenant building are APAC Inc. and CIT Group Inc.

Griffin bought the two assets for 32 tenant-in-common equity investors who comprised Griffin's Capital CORE 1031 Investment Program. Transwestern will continue to provide leasing and management services for the properties, Griffin Capital president Kevin Shields says in a prepared statement.

"This is the largest tenant-in-common transaction that includes two non-contiguous, multi-state properties within the same offering," Shields says. "The longer-dated, stable rent roll of the Southfield, MI property combined with the more recent renewal exposure in the Atlanta property provides a very strategic and complementary combination" for the investors. He adds, "The investors benefit from geographic, product and tenant diversity in a single investment."

JP Morgan Chase Bank provided a $38.6-million, seven-year, fixed-rate first mortgage loan for the acquisition. Shields says "the substantial majority" of the $21.28 million of investor equity was provided from clients of 1031 Exchange Options, Pacific West Securities Inc., Omni Brokerage Inc. and Berthel Fisher Financial Services Inc.

Shields says Griffin Capital used its new Secured Asset Funding Entity (SAFE) concept in this offering. He says SAFE is designed to provide capital liquidity to an investment structure that is "otherwise capital constrained." For example, Shields says, "If one of our properties requires capital in excess of our funded reserve, there are few options available to the sponsor or investor, other than a capital call or cash flow restriction--neither of which are palatable." He adds, "SAFE provides a capital arrow in our quiver, allowing us to access additional capital without impairing investor returns."

Los Angeles-based Griffin Capital is a privately owned firm that owns and manages a portfolio of over 5.3 million sf located in 14 states. The company has satellite offices in Chicago and Greenwich, CT.