$10M Loan Unlocks Nine-Month Rate Lock

DALLAS-With his ExponentHR team now settled into place, software guru Larry Lacerte has inked the last paper for a $10-million refinance of a new office building in Quorum Business Park. The fixed-rate interest was locked in nine months before the loan closing.

"That's the uniqueness of it," Stuart Wernick, president of Dallas-based Quantum First Capital LP, explains to GlobeSt.com. "He wanted to do a forward takeout while the construction was going on." As would be expected, the five-story, 65,320-sf building at 4970 Landmark Blvd. is laced with high-tech security systems for the well-known entrepreneur's headquarters.

Wernick says the 4.2-acre site is large enough to seat a twin office building. The second phase, he adds, most likely will be built in a few years.

Wernick arranged a 10-year loan with a 30-year amortization at a sub-7% fixed-rate interest through Newark-based Prudential Mortgage Co. to replace a traditional construction loan from a bank. The new note's loan to value is 75%.

ExponentHR, founded in the late 1990s as Exponent Technologies, had been leasing roughly 15,000 sf in North Dallas' prestigious Preston Center. According to Wernick, the $30 per sf rental rate and need to expand drove Lacerte to do a build-to-suit rather than lease again. "It made better sense to build a building and have all the technology the way they needed it," Wernick says. Austin Commercial of Dallas was the general contractor Cullum Interests Inc., also a local firm, was the construction manager. S&S Partners of Dallas was the architect.

Wernick says as rental rates go up so do the number of requests from local business owners eyeing build-to-suit projects in the metroplex. In the past three weeks, work has begun on financial analyses for a packaging company, optical firm and marketing agency to determine the merits of a build-to-suit. "We see it in the medical field, but it's an increasing trend for others," he says.