NuStyle To Invest $32M for Apartment Reconstruction

(Mark Your Calendars: RealShare Apartments 2011, October 20 in Los Angeles).

OMAHA, NE-NuStyle Development has purchased a vacant office building here, the former Northern Natural Gas Co. headquarters, and will convert the 255,000-square-foot property into up to 200 apartments. The company bought the building from MidCity Bank of Omaha for $2.3 million, and will spend another $30 million on the conversion.

Northern merged with Enron and moved to Houston more than 10 years ago. The First National Bank of Omaha was the last tenant, and it moved out in 2001.

Investors Realty of Omaha represented NuStyle in the three-year negotiation for the building, which had been listed for $10 million. Ryan Zabrowski with Investors tells GlobeSt.com the 56-year-old building’s offices are too old-fashioned for tenants today. “The upper floor-plates are 7,000 square feet, and users today want open floor plates. It’s just functionally obsolete,” he says.

The property is at 2223 Dodge St., on the west side of the downtown Central Business District and next door to Creighton University, a Jesuit college. “We’ve seen a resurgence between the CBD and Midtown, and this area kind of connects the two,” Zabrowski says.

He says the demand for apartments is made obvious by the success of NuStyle’s other conversion property nearby. The developer just opened 106 apartment units in the former Farm Credit Services of America corporate headquarters a couple of blocks from the Northern building. “They opened there at already 84% leased,” Zabrowski says. “Apartments here are still mirroring the national occupancy level, and rates are starting to move up.”