Admiral Refinances Build-Out Loan for Govt. Archives

VALMEYER, IL-Admiral Parkway Inc. recently was acquired a $26.5 million refinancing deal for the firm’s build-out work on an office/warehouse for the US National Archives and Records Administration. The original loan was called due, so the Marcus & Millichap Capital Corp. set up the package with a lender offering bond financing.

The administration’s National Personnel Records Center is subleasing 400,000 square feet for 20 years in Admiral’s six-million-square-foot Rock City property, which consists mostly of underground caves. Joseph Koppies, president of Admiral, leases the caves from the city. The property, a former quarry, was turned over to the private sector after the city was rebuilt following the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993.

The archives administration was planning on building two office buildings in nearby St. Louis for military records storage. However, the General Services Administration decided to instead build a $115 million, 500,000-square-foot office in St. Louis for permanent military records storage, and to lease out the space here for temporary records. “They’re called temporary because we eventually dispose of about 97% of the millions of records,” Bryan McGraw with the National Archives tells GlobeSt.com. Construction started last month on the St. Louis facility, and should be complete by May 2011, McGraw says.

Koppies tells GlobeSt.com that he’s now working to build-out another 75,000 square feet for the archives at the Rock City site. “We’ve been working with government agencies to get more space leased there, and we’re talking to another huge company for another records storage area,” he says. The site also includes about 200,000 square feet of refrigerated storage.

Chad O’Connor with Marcus & Millichap arranged the refinancing loan for the larger National Archives build-out. The loan has a 5.35% interest rate, fixed for 18 years with an 18-year amortization. “This is really one of the more top-of-the-line construction projects I’ve seen for the GSA. But the government is able to save like 30 cents per box for being able to stack the storage boxes really high in these caves. This was an easy financing to do, it’s a 20-year government lease.”