Embassy Straps On Sign for Nine-Year Deal

LAS COLINAS, TX-The Embassy in Las Colinas has just landed a full-floor deal in a submarket built on its ability to corner some of the largest office deals in Dallas-Fort Worth and now one of the darkest. There’s talk that more full-floor packages are being bundled, but for now the winner is a nine-year lease that backfills 19,386 sf vacated two years ago by Fidelity Investments.

Digital Architects Inc. will exit about 7,500 sf at 5525 N. MacArthur Blvd., also a Las Colinas address, for the 10th floor at 1431 Greenway Dr. Negotiations wrought a middle-of-the-road package for the submarket, Ken Walter, managing director in Dallas for Insignia/ESG, tells GlobeSt.com. In exchange for a nine-year commitment, the tenant got six months of free rent, office space at $15.70 per sf plus electric, extra covered parking space and tenant improvement dollars in the mid-$20 range.

And for the first time, the Embassy will be sporting an “eyebrow” sign in an “exclusive” right for the Digital Architects’ name on the building. The high-brow Las Colinas limits building signs to two sides and no higher than the second floor. “That was worth quite a bit to them,” Walter says of a closed deal that most likely is Las Colinas’ first full-floor deal this year. Talks began in October with the software developer amid heated courting by Las Colinas’ building owners.

The class B Embassy’s 197,812 sf is now 64% filled, with 70,237 sf available. Fidelity emptied two floors and part of another two years ago, the bulk of which has since been re-tenanted in the 10-story, 20-year-old structure.

Insignia/ESG’s Walter along with Dennis Barnes of Cushman & Wakefield of Texas Inc. represented the property owner, the San Francisco-based Rreef. Jay R. Lucas and Andy Folmer, both with the Harry B. Lucas Co. in Dallas, bargained on behalf of Digital Architects, which is planning to move into the new office in August.