Plaza of the Americas, Last Valued at $95 Million, Sells to New York Investor
Originally posted by Candace Carlisle, CoStar News
A downtown Dallas office property has sold to a New York-based real estate investor in what is being called the largest deal so far this year in the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
Plaza of the Americas, a 1.2 million-square-foot office and retail property at 600 N. Pearl St. and 700 N. Pearl St., has sold to New York-based Shelbourne for an undisclosed sum. Both 25-story office towers have large office vacancies with a 120,000-square-foot retail and restaurant atrium between the buildings. Its largest tenants include the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., BDO and Capital One. The office property fits into Shelbourne’s investment strategy to “acquire Class A office buildings that are opportunistic and high-yielding in secondary and tertiary markets,” the company said on its website.
According to the Dallas Central Appraisal District, the two office towers and an attached eight-story parking garage were last valued at nearly $95 million. Shelbourne executives were not immediately available for comment Tuesday.
The deal is “Dallas’ largest office sale so far in 2023,” said Chris Murphy, vice chairman of Newmark, in a statement. Murphy and his team had been marketing the property for the seller since February 2022. He added the property is positioned to “capture future office and retail leasing demand in downtown Dallas as millions of square feet of Class B office undergoes a repurposing to alternative uses, primarily residential and hospitality.”
A joint venture between M-M Properties and Invesco Real Estate bought the property in 2011 for an estimated $100 million. Clarion Partners later acquired Invesco’s ownership interest in the property.The retail atrium totaling 140,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space previously had an indoor ice rink but the owners spent $26 million upgrading the property in the last decade, including taking out the indoor ice rink in lieu of a lush atrium for tenants.
The office buildings, constructed in 1980, are expected to undergo a multimillion-dollar renovation later this year. Details of the renovation were not immediately unveiled.
Rising interest rates, a potential recession and limited credit availability in the last year and a half have been cited as the reason behind the global capital markets slowdown. The Dallas-Fort Worth region, like other major U.S. metropolitan areas, has been impacted with sales volume in the last 12 months being down about 72%, according to CoStar data.
One of the few office properties to trade this year was Saint Paul Place, an office tower in the Dallas Arts District, to Dallas-based Pacific Elm Properties. The buyer secured a loan for $66.7 million on the property, according to deed records. The last big office property to sell in downtown Dallas was Trammell Crow Center, which was acquired by Regent Properties in early 2022.