Long live office’: Raleigh firms buy office campus to house operations
By Caleb Harshberger – Staff Writer, Triangle Business Journal
Nov 17, 2021 Updated Nov 17, 2021, 3:06pm EST
A group of businesses have teamed up to buy a North Raleigh office campus for their own use.
On Tuesday, seven businesses – some publicly named, some not – closed an $8 million deal for the Campus North office park. The new owners plan to relocate to the park as space becomes available and are beginning plans for major upgrades to the site.
Among the buyers publicly named are real estate firm Trademark Properties’ division Trademark Residential, construction firm Envision Homes and contractor Cardinal Civil. The other four are a real estate closing attorney; a renovations company and two others.
Campus north features 64,437 square feet of space across a pair of 2-story office buildings. The property is situated on around 5 acres at 805 Spring Forest Road.
The seller, a group affiliated with Raleigh-based APG Advisors, paid around $3 million for the campus in 1991, according to county records. APG Advisors director of investment sales David Divine represented the seller in the deal.
TradeMark Properties Chief Executive Officer Jim Harris represented the buyers.
“We are happy to bring several local business owners and investors together to improve upon this site and to contribute to the great growth in this submarket of Raleigh,” Harris said. “While much of our area’s office space is having to adjust to the realities of the pandemic, the self-contained suites at Campus North are already a safe and attractive option for a variety of businesses.”
He said the idea came about at a lunch with members of the seven firms as each were considering finding new spaces for their companies. Rather than going out and each buying a commercial condo or an investment property, Harris said they came up with the idea to go in together on buying an office building where they could each have a space plus room for additional tenants.
One of the advantages of the property is that each suite has its own entrance, meaning tenants don’t have to share common spaces as in many office buildings and parks.Â
From here, the group is planning extensive upgrades to the outdoor spaces and to add spaces for food trucks, picnic areas and other gathering and event areas.
Additionally, Harris said they plan to upgrade interiors of units once some existing tenants move out and new ones come in.
He said the park is largely full at the moment.
“When we started looking at this, it was around 80 percent or below occupancy,” Harris said. “It’s around 90 percent now. But I have to be careful because I have owners that want to move into the space.”
Dogwood State Bank provided capital for the deal and worked with the buyers on their vision for the property.
The deal comes as office properties continue to struggle under the impacts of the pandemic and the shift to remote work. But Harris said that despite the current turmoil, he believes demand for office space will return.
“I’m bullish on office. I know it’s soft (now), but I believe it’s the center point of the physicality of the culture of companies, and I don’t see it going away,” he said. “This is our statement saying “˜long live office.'”
This latest deal joins a small number of office sales in recent weeks as investment activity continues to center around apartments and industrial space.
One big office deal closed on Sept. 20 when an affiliate of Charlotte-based Ferncroft Capital, with the support of some passive investments partners, acquired a more than 450,000-square-foot office complex off Corporate Center Drive in Raleigh that’s fully leased to Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC).