First Deals at Hand for Green Building

As part of the party, the Dutch owner will be introducing a new leasing team: Worthey Wiles and Blanton Cook with Trammell Crow Co. West World Management Inc. interviewed five firms for the 4500 W. Eldorado Parkway building, which was being preleased by Cushman & Wakefield of Texas Inc.

Sandra Heffernan, vice president for Purchase, NY-based West World Management, says the TCC brokers' "enthusiasm about it being green" was the decisionmaker. "That it wasn't just another building, but a special building," she tells GlobeSt.com, "not just to us, the owners, but to Trammell Crow too."

Positioned on three acres, the class A office building's parking lot is underlain with 19 miles of geothermal piping. Heffernan says contractors drilled 350 feet into the earth for the geothermal heating system. As a result, the latest analysis shows the building, up for lease at $25 per sf plus electric, has a 74% energy savings over traditional office spaces, according to Heffernan.

Wiles says the team has 10,000 sf to 15,000 sf of deals waiting to close and at least 40,000 sf of prospects. The first signed lease could be in hand by Friday. "There's a lot of demand for good office space in McKinney," he says, citing interest from insurance, financial, private capital, medical office and health-care businesspeople. Wiles says the goal is to have the building fully leased by summer's end.

Doors will be open Thursday from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. for the party and tours. The building, costing at least $11 million, took one year to deliver and spent two years on the drawing board. West World bought the land so it could "control the entry" to a 570-unit rental property that it built on 28 abutting acres, Heffernan says.

West World is no stranger to green designs because of its parent firm, Wereldhave NV, a long-time developer and owner of sustainable properties in Europe. "These principles have guided development in Wereldhave's European portfolio and the McKinney Green Building now exemplifies these principles in the United States portfolio," according to a corporate press release. The McKinney design captures rainwater for irrigation, reduces potable water consumption and includes solar panels to generate electricity and hot water to complement the geothermal heating and cooling system. Electricity is being purchased from a wind farm and its building materials contain recycled content.

HDR Architecture Inc. of Omaha designed the structure; Austin Commercial in Dallas was the general contractor. Andres Construction Services, also in Dallas, was the project manager.