August 2005

Montague Park was originally developed in two phases by a joint venture of Sutter Hill and the Equitable. The first three buildings were completed in 1986 and the last two in 1989 and 1990. The buildings range in size from approximately 75,000 sf to nearly 100,000 sf. Three buildings are fully leased and two buildings are vacant. Major tenants include Ultratech Inc. and Pillar Data Systems.

The park was 61% leased when Amstar acquired the property and 62% leased upon resale. When it acquired the property, Amstar said the asset was "perfectly positioned" to be the next highly desired product in the Silicon Valley "simply because class A+ product is being quickly absorbed." Amstar executive director D. Scott Gibler told GlobeSt.com that recent expansions by Google, Yahoo and others had driven class A vacancy lower and taken a big bite out of the inventory of plus 50,000-sf spaces in the market.

"From the day we acquired Montague Park, we received calls from interested buyers," Gibler says this week in a prepared statement. "We took advantage of the flood of investor interest and were able to make a sizable profit for a one-year hold. The price offered allowed us to realize the profit we underwrote into the acquisition but in a much shorter time period."

Amstar Group chief executive Gabe Fink says the company has about $300 million in cash available for real estate investments right away and plans to deploy some $1.5 billion over the next 24 to 36 months. So far in 2005, Amstar has competed investment transactions totaling more than $500 million, including an office building in Los Angeles, an office building in Baltimore, two multifamily development sites in Los Angeles, a historic office property in Houston and a hotel in Alexandria, VA. The company currently has holdings in California, Florida, Texas, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, Phoenix and Washington, DC.

CPS Corfac International represented both Amstar and the Four Corners Properties/Westbrook Partners joint venture in the Montague Park transaction.

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