Crocker Re-Acquires Atlantic Plaza Center

ATLANTA—Crocker Partners just acquired Atlantic Center Plaza, an iconic 23-story, 500,000-square-foot class A office tower in the heart of Atlanta's Midtown market. A joint venture between Crocker and the Distressed Real Estate Opportunities Fund managed by Siguler Guff & Company, LP recapitalized the building.

Built in 2001, Atlantic Center Plaza is LEED Gold Certified and is one of several assets Crocker previously owned, sold in 2005, and recently re-acquired. There were no brokers involved with this transaction.

“Atlantic Center Plaza has tremendous value-add potential,” says Partner Chris Eachus, who directs Crocker's Atlanta regional office. “We're excited to reinvest in a trophy asset, in a premier submarket, at a time when metro Atlanta is experiencing significant absorption and job growth.”  

The Atlanta metro market added 57,800 jobs year over year February 2013, according to The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As Eachus sees it, Atlantic Center Plaza is well positioned to attract relocating and expanding companies, with one of the largest contiguous blocks of class A space in the market, up to 180,000 square feet. The office tower is also located within a designated Opportunity Zone, which provides significant tax incentives to existing and new tenants for each job they create.

Among the largest class A office landlords in the Atlanta market, Crocker owns the 18-story, 432,000-square-foot Prominence office tower in the Buckhead submarket and an adjacent 6.4-acre land parcel proposed for 700 high-rise residential units. It also owns Cumberland Center II, three buildings in the Alpharetta submarket totaling 333,000 square feet, and a 3.7=acre parcel for future development in the Central Perimeter market.

Altogether, Crocker now owns and operates 1.7 million square feet in the Atlanta market and more than 6 million square feet across the southeast U.S. and Texas. Atlantic Center Plaza represents the fifth acquisition in the past year by the Crocker / Siguler Guff venture, which constitutes nearly 2.9 million square feet of properties located in primary markets throughout the southeast U.S. with acquisition costs exceeding $500 million.