Group Offers to Buy Merrill Lynch Campus

DENVER-An Israeli investment group has placed the two-building, 420,000-sf Merrill Lynch campus under contract. The price that the Red Sea Group will pay for the property in the Meridian International Office Park in Douglas County was not disclosed.

But Mike Noon, of Noon & Co., in Denver, reportedly is listing it on behalf of Merrill Lynch for about $52.5 million. Although that equates to about $125 per sf, the project also includes a 240,000-sf parking garage and enough land to build a 1.2 million-sf campus.

Candis Hewitt of Cushman & Wakefield is representing the Red Sea Group, which has its US headquarters in Dallas.

The low-key company sold many of its apartment buildings in the late 1990s, when the market became over-heated, says Mitch Kralis, vice president of the group.

The private company’s diversified portfolio includes holdings throughout the US as well as in Europe, the Middle East and South Africa, he says.

Its holdings include hotels, office, retail, industrial, medical centers and even an auto center in Israel.

Kralis says he is attracted to the Merrill Lynch campus because of its setting along Denver’s southeast corridor in one of the premier office parks in the metro area and the quality of its construction.

He says he already has had inquiries from potential tenants. Merrill Lynch, which built the complex in the 1990s for about $200 per sf, is vacating it as part of a national cost-cutting measure.