A joint venture between North Signal Capital and Westport Capital Partners has acquired two industrial sites at North Pointe Commerce Park from WestRock. The JV plans to turn the Charleston, S.C., space into a 250,000-square-foot Class A building.

“The Industrial market in Charleston has averaged single digit vacancy over the last 10 years,” Peter Goulding, North Signal Capital LLC’s partner, told Commercial Property Executive. “Charleston continues to experience outsized economic growth which has created an unprecedented demand for quality industrial product. The lack of entitled industrial land and available buildings makes this the ideal time to develop speculative industrial product.”

UWorld, a company specializing in exam preparation and e-learning, will relocate its office to the Cypress Waters master-planned development in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The new 50,000-square-foot space is located on the third floor of 9111 Cypress Waters Blvd. The company will move there in January 2018, from its current home at 545 E. John Carpenter Fwy., Suite 1600.

Weiss Realty is welcoming two new tenants to its 162,000-square-foot Highpoint Corporate Center in Fairfield, N.J.

Cloud services provider Fusion Telecommunications International will relocate its regional office from 155 Willowbrook Blvd., in Wayne, N.J. The company will take up 15,000 square feet of space at the suburban New Jersey property. The second tenant, IT services and solutions firm Acuative, has inked a 6,500-square-foot lease and will relocate its headquarters from the nearby 30 Two Bridges Road…

In two transactions within the BGC Partners/Cantor Fitzgerald family, BGC has acquired Berkeley Point Financial LLC from CF and certain affiliates for $875 million and has also made a $100 million cash investment in a new CRE-related finance and investment business.

In the latter transaction, BGC will own about 27 percent of the new entity, currently designated as CF Real Estate Finance Holdings LP, while CF will own the remaining 73 percent, for its investment of $266.7 million, according to an SEC filing.

CBRE is representing a group of six owners in the sale of Chouteau’s Landing, a 19-property redevelopment portfolio situated on 11.8 acres in St. Louis. Matt Bukhshtaber and Will Mura of CBRE’s St. Louis office will arrange the sale.

MIXED-USE OPPORTUNITIES

The 19-property portfolio features 869,821 square feet of space. Located south of the Gateway Arch, along the St. Louis riverfront, the property is in close proximity to Arch and Busch Stadium, offering convenient access to transportation and to interstates 64 and 44. The portfolio could support multifamily, office, industrial and retail space…

JLL secured a 15-year lease for the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) in Camp Springs, Md. The General Services Administration (GSA) will consolidate the agency’s five lease locations into one headquarters campus, relocating 3,700 employees in 2020.

The company will occupy 574,767 square feet of space at One Capital Gateway Drive. The USCIS lease follows the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) announcement that it is relocating from Pentagon City to its new 625,000-square-foot headquarters in Springfield, Va. JLL’s Jae Lee and William Ruppe spearheaded the deal, and also represented the GSA in the USCIS lease transaction. JLL’s Brian Sullivan, supported by Art Turowski, Brian Saal, Lucy Kitchin and Jeff Hurvitz, represented the developer, Peter Schwartz…

KS Partners has selected Cushman & Wakefield to lease Highwood Office Park, a Class A, three-building office complex in Tewksbury, Mass. Executive Director Michael Dalton and Senior Associates Blake Baldwin and Kurtis Gibbs will handle the leasing operations.

The 279,000-square-foot property is located at 1-3 Highwood Drive and sits on 17.7 acres. The park underwent a $2.7 million renovation that included upgrades to lobbies, restrooms, base building and common areas. Additionally, it features:

Rhino Medical Services renewed and expanded its lease at the Bank of America Building in Arlington, Texas, bringing the building to a vacancy rate of 10 percent. The health-care staffing company augmented its office by nearly 40 percent to 13,678 square feet, becoming the building’s biggest tenant.

Lowenstein Sandler has leased 170,000 square feet at 56 at Roseland, a Class A office building that was redeveloped in Roseland, N.J., by its owners, a joint venture between Mountain Development Corp. and Square Mile Capital.

Located at  56 Livingston Ave., under the address of One Lowenstein Drive, the 400,000-square-foot property features complete interior renovations and extensive amenity upgrades…

Lowenstein Sandler Opens New HQ in the Garden State

Denholtz Associates completed a lease renewal with The Times Publishing Co. at a 180,630-square-foot office building in downtown Tampa, Fla., dubbed The Times Building. The tenant occupies an 18,250-square-foot space at the property and recently signed another lease renewal at 490 First Ave. in St. Petersburg, Fla., another asset in the landlord’s Florida portfolio.

Colony NorthStar has embarked on a multi-million dollar renovation project at a Class A, 106,000-square-foot office building in Atlanta’s Cumberland/Galleria submarket. Ownership selected Lincoln Property Co. Southeast to lead marketing efforts at the property.

MODERN TOUCHES

Located at 3333 Riverwood Parkway, the five-story asset sits on a 2.3-acre site and was completed in 1992. The modernization program will feature upgrades to the main lobby, common corridors, elevator cabs and restrooms. In addition, improvements will include enhancing signage in the parking deck…

Easterly Government Properties, a REIT focused on commercial properties leased to U.S. government agencies, recently acquired the Salt Lake City field office, making it the single largest private owner of FBI field offices in the U.S.

Easterly, a Washington, D.C.-based company which acquires, develops and manages Class A commercial properties leased to government entities, now owns seven of the 56 FBI field offices…

Specialty REIT Has the FBI on its Most Wanted List

NAI Hiffman, which recently brokered a large lease renewal for 3M, closed on two new agreements at 4 Westbrook Corporate Center in Westchester, Ill. Legacy Professionals, a certified public accounting firm, signed a lease for 20,673 square feet, relocating from 311 South Wacker. The other company is Regent Surgical Health, which will occupy 5,669 square feet in the center’s fourth building.

Kelley Morrell has joined Blackstone as a managing director & head of asset management for the firm’s tactical opportunities business, effective immediately.

“We are excited to have Kelley join Blackstone,” David Blitzer, Blackstone’s global head of its tactical opportunities group, said in a prepared release. “She has a strong track record of successfully managing complex situations with various stakeholders across multiple industries. We look forward to her delivering that expertise and judgment to our portfolio.”

kanska has achieved the “topping out” milestone at 99M, an 11-story, 234,000-square-foot Class A mixed-use building being built in Washington, D.C.’s in-demand Capitol Riverfront neighborhood.

The property will consist of nearly 220,000 square feet of office space, and about 11,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space on the ground floor…

Skanska Tops Out DC Office Development

Hanley Investment Group continues to be very active in the Los Angles Metro area. After having recently closed several retail deals in Riverside, Lake Elsinore and Corona, Calif., the firm brokered a new transaction in Santa Clarita, Calif. The 42,134-square-foot Seco Canyon Village changed hands for $15.5 million, being bought by a family trust based in Beverly Hills.

TierPoint is investing $10 million into the opening of a second Baltimore-area data center.

Located at the BWI Technology Park, the 35,000-square-foot data center is slotted for completion in the spring of 2018. The 97-acre project was developed by St. John Properties, who recently just secured seven leases at Greenleigh at Crossroads, a phase of the 1,000-acre mixed-use development Baltimore Crossroads @ 95…

TierPoint to Develop 2nd Baltimore-Area Data Center

Seattle has been one of the strongest rental markets during the current cycle. Over the last five years, average rents have risen nearly $500 to $1,770. Development activity has kicked into high gear, leading to the delivery of 23,000 units since the start of 2015. With the rate of completions set to continue, the metro is faced with questions of overbuilding. However, a strong employment market continues to provide jobs at a rate that further drives population growth, generating an insatiable appetite for housing.

Compass Offices is expanding and redesigning its flexible work space at Singapore Land Tower. The company plans to add a second floor featuring purposefully-built serviced offices, breakout and co-working spaces.

Located in the heart of Singapore’s central business district, more than 660 workstations will occupy the 19th and 30th floors of the building…

Compass Offices Expands Co-Working Space in Singapore

Ballangen, Norway, a town located 140 miles north of the Arctic Circle, is set to become the site of the world’s largest data center as Kolos, a U.S.-Norwegian company prepares to open the first phase of the fully sustainable project by 2018.

Belonging to a new class of hyper-scale data centers, the facility will be situated in a 100 percent “green” location, with abundant hydropower and dark fiber infrastructure…

While retailers are facing volatility at a national level, Brooklyn is an outlier when it comes to retail growth, with companies flocking to the New York City borough when looking to expand, according to a new report from GFI Realty Services.

The Carlyle Group has secured a five-year, $84.8 million floating-rate loan to refinance 4300 and 4400 North First St., a two-building Class A office campus in North San Jose, Calif. HFF arranged the financing.

Originally completed 17 years ago, the two properties are both three-story, steel-framed office buildings boasting 63,000-square-foot floorplates. Cisco Systems originally designed the campus, and Carlyle acquired the property a decade ago. In 2009, the company landed Harmonic Inc. as the anchor tenant for 4300 N. First St…

Thorofare Capital, which recently originated a three-year loan for the purchase of a corporate office campus in Illinois, also partially financed the acquisition of an 84,468-square-foot property in Charleston, S.C. The buyer, a joint venture between Insite Property and Eastern Federal Corp., nabbed the asset from Chicago-based J.L. Woode Ltd. in exchange for $21.5 million. The money left after closing the transaction will be used for renovating and stabilizing the property, which is completely leased.

Baring Real Estate Advisers disposed of a fully leased Class A office/R&D building in Lake Forest, Calif. Drawbridge Realty purchased the single-tenant net lease asset.

Located at 26200 Enterprise Way in the Pacific Commercentre, a sought-after master-planned business park, the 144,906-square-foot building comprises two stories and features large floor plates with flexible configurations and ample surface parking. Since its construction in 2000, Panasonic Avionics Corp. has called the property its headquarters, as part of its 18-acre, seven-building, 500,000-square-foot global HQ campus in Lake Forest..

White Plains Healthcare Properties I LLC has selected the companies that will work for the development of the 110,000-square-foot White Plains Institute for Rehabilitation & Healthcare, a rehabilitation and skilled nursing facility located in White Plains, N.Y. The developer of the $60 million project will be The Congress Co. The joint venture Congress/Consigli JV will work as Construction Manager and The Architectural Team Inc. will be in charge of the design.

Meridian acquired Sutter Square, a 174,689-square-foot office building in Concord, Calif. This marks the company’s second value-add office investment in the last 12 months in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cranbrook Group of Modesto, Calif., sold the property for $26.2 million. Transwestern was selected to handle the leasing.

CBRE was awarded the exclusive marketing assignment of two office buildings in Miami and Boca Raton, Fla., totaling 107,459 square feet. Senior Vice President David Wigoda of CBRE Capital Markets will oversee the teams in charge of marketing efforts.

Located at 5901 Miami Gardens Drive in Hialeah, Fla., the three-story building encompasses 56,650 square feet and was constructed in 2008. Situated just off Northwest 57^th Avenue, the property offers access to Interstate 75, Palmetto Expressway and the Florida Turnpike. The owner selected the team of David Wigoda, First Vice President Carol Ellis-Cutler and Financial Analyst Sean Kelly to sell 5901 Commons…

Major Japanese real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan has taken a 90 percent stake in the $3.6 billion 50 Hudson Yards in New York, through its subsidiary Mitsui Fudosan America. The 2.8 million-square-foot office skyscaper will be one of the largest standalone office buildings in Manhattan upon completion, which is scheduled for 2022.

Avison Young’s Florida Capital Markets Group has closed the sale of Citizens Bank & Trust Plaza, a 71,190-square-foot office building in downtown Lakeland, Fla. The multi-tenant asset traded in a $7.2 million deal to South Florida-based Geneva Group.

Located at 402 S. Kentucky Ave. on a 1.33-acre site, the six-story property was 89.9 percent leased at the time of the sale. Citizens Bank & Trust Plaza features recently renovated common areas, covered parking and is in the proximity of several newly constructed apartments, single-family housing, as well as restaurants and entertainment venues. Notable tenants include Citizen’s Bank and Trust, CliftonLarsonAllen and MidAmerica.

Gaedeke Group LLC leased 43,000 square feet of office space in four deals with new and existing tenants at Millennium Tower in Addison, Texas. Lincoln National Life Insurance Co. and Selligent Inc. are scheduled to move into the building in October. The new leases bring the vacancy of the LEED-certified office tower to 17 percent.

A few months after breaking ground on its campus in Dearborn, Mich., Ford Land selected Mid-America Real Estate to lease the property’s retail component. The team of brokers handling the listing includes Principal Brad Rosenberg, Vice President Bryan Weiss and Associate Lindsey Shaw. The space will be available by mid-2018, when the property is slated for delivery.

Tentindo Kendall Canniff & Keefe LLP has signed a 15,000-square-foot lease renewal in Boston’s Hood Park campus. The 1.2 million-square-foot, 20-acre urban campus is undergoing comprehensive renovations, as the owner aims to bring all of its facilities to the Class A standard.

The law firm will move to 510 Rutherford Ave., one of three buildings located in the master-planned campus, which is in Boston’s oldest neighborhood, Charlestown. The property offers an on-site fitness center, café, green spaces and walkways, as well as zipcars and electric vehicle charging stations…

The Cleveland multifamily market is growing slowly, particularly in submarkets outside the urban core that still face difficulties stemming from the last downturn. The city center appeals to investors and residents alike, with signs of emerging opportunities. However, the metro is steadily losing residents, while rent growth—2.0 percent year-over-year as of June—is underperforming.

NAI James E. Hanson has brokered the sale of a 157,822-square-foot industrial building in Flanders, N.J., on behalf of both the seller, 700 Bartley Chester Road LLC, and the buyer, CRG 700 LLC.

“The location of the property, its targeted use as an investment property, the quality of the existing structure and the buyer’s familiarity with the local market made this a highly appealing property,” Joshua Levering, SIOR, NAI James E. Hanson’s senior vice president, told Commercial Property Executive. “The building was held in a trust which wanted to redeploy the funds in different directions. As a leased investment warehouse/manufacturing property, the demand was very strong.”

CBRE has completed the sale of the majority interest in Trump Ocean Club Hotel, a 369-unit luxury resort in Panama City’s Punta Pacifica neighborhood. Newland International Properties Corp. sold the stake consisting of 202 hotel units to Ithaca Capital Investments in a $24.5 million deal.

Banyan Street Capital has embarked on a capital improvement program at Atlanta Plaza, a 631,808-square-foot, Class A office tower in Atlanta’s Buckhead submarket. The owner partnered with architecture company Perkins+Will to transform the property by paying homage to prominent Atlanta local John Ottley. Renovations are slated for completion by the end of 2017.

Premier Design + Build Group LLC has teamed up with Bridge Development Partners again on an industrial facility in Illinois, delivering a 626,848-square-foot build-out property for an unidentified e-commerce tenant.

The fulfillment center is located at Bridge Point North, a 240-acre business park in Waukegan, Ill., with access to I-94 and the Tri-State Tollway. It’s also about 32 miles from O’Hare International Airport…

Premier Delivers Fulfillment Center in Illinois

DSC Partners tapped Transwestern to handle leasing and property management services for its 77 Upper Rock office building in Rockville, Md. Transwestern’s Phil McCarthy, Keith Foery, Ethan Bernardi and Nathan Bortnick are handling leasing, while Colin Diefenbach handles property management services for the building.

WeWork Cos. just reeled in the kind of mega-monetary commitment startups dream of. The collaborative workspace provider announced that Tokyo-based multinational telecommunications Softbank Group and the Softbank Vision Fund will invest $4.4 billion in the company.

“This support from SoftBank and the Vision Fund will provide even more opportunities for creators as we set out to humanize the way people work and live,” Adam Neumann, co-founder & CEO of WeWork, said in a prepared statement.

CBRE strengthened its South Florida Agency and Tenant Representation team through the addition of Alina Plasencia as senior associate. Plasencia joins the team of Carol Ellis-Cutler where she will handle office leasing for clients in Miami’s northern submarket. Additionally, she will focus on expanding the team’s landlord and tenant representation as well as growing its South Florida capabilities.

Tiktin Real Estate Investment Services has arranged the joint sale of two retail properties encompassing nearly 4,000 square feet in Tampa, Fla. According to public records, Orion Venture VI LLC sold the assets to Shorewood Estates MHC LLC in a $2.9 million deal, while U.S. Bank provided $1.5 million in acquisition financing.

Though the report doesn’t use this term, the Q2 2017 State of the Real Estate Market Chartbook from RCLCO seems to indicate that the current CRE cycle might be heading for a soft landing.

In the report’s words, “Multiple metrics and indicators suggest that we are in or nearing a ‘late stable’ stage of the market cycle for most property types in most geographies.” Multiple property types in some metro areas (for example, Washington, D.C., and Houston), as well as multifamily nationwide, “appear to have surpassed ‘peak’ conditions at this point, though we have no reason to expect a sharp downturn.”

Savills Studley brokered two office expansions on behalf of Ryan Specialty Group and one of its subsidiaries, RT Specialty. Following the necessary improvements, RSG will occupy 32,495 square feet at Two Prudential Plaza, while RT Specialty conduct its operations in a 38,000-square-foot space at 500 W. Monroe.

Transwestern has been retained by an undisclosed seller to market Parkway Industrial, a 499,639-square-foot portfolio of flex/industrial space in Hanover, Md.

“Parkway Industrial offers investors a rare opportunity to buy a high-quality industrial portfolio in a gateway market that’s heavily supply constrained,” Mark Glagola, Transwestern’s senior managing director of its Mid-Atlantic capital markets group told, Commercial Property Executive. “There are very few development opportunities in this area because of lack of available land.”

KBS Realty Advisors sold 625 Mt. Auburn in Cambridge, Mass., to The Davis Cos.

Located at 625 Mount Auburn St., the 137,421-square-foot office property comprises three floors. Originally built in 1961, the building underwent cosmetic renovations in 2001. Asset features include a cafeteria, fitness center, conference center, common area Wi-Fi and 307 parking spaces…

Davis Cos. Buys 137 KSF MA Office Asset

Starboard Commercial Real Estate sold a three-story office building on Chestnut Street in San Francisco. According to Property Shark data, Sunhill Enterprises LP acquired the 16,900-square-foot asset for $9.4 million.

Located at 665 Chestnut St., the property offers easy access to bus stations, restaurants and hotels, including Curry Leaf, Entella Hotel and San Francisco Marriott Fisherman’s Wharf. The building features upgraded and newly remodeled second and third floors. Tenants include Retronyms Inc., The Janssen Group and Discover Health…

Bridge Development Partners brokered the lease of 130,000 square feet of space at Bridge Point Northlake, a 256,752-square-foot cold storage facility in Northlake, Ill., to Frozen Assets Cold Storage. Lease terms remained undisclosed.

Bridge Point Northlake is located at 555 Northwest Ave., minutes away from O’Hare International Airport and with immediate access to interstates 294 and 290. Interstates 90, 88 and 355, as well as the Union Pacific Intermodal and the Canadian Pacific Intermodal, are also nearby…

The 1.1 million-square-foot Northwestern Mutual Tower and Commons project along the Lake Michigan lakefront in downtown Milwaukee has celebrated its grand opening.

Gilbane Building Co., of Providence, R.I., was the project’s construction manager, along with joint venture partner CG Schmidt, a Milwaukee-based construction management and general contracting firm.

The 32-story tower adjoins a three-story, two-block-long space known as the Commons. Amenities at the complex include a three-acre public green space with gardens and trees, a coffee shop, an interactive museum, a 75,000-square-foot food server on the second and third floors, a 25,000-square-foot fitness center, and outdoor balconies on the 31st and 32nd floors…

Newmark Knight Frank has added three net-lease specialists to its team—Ken Hedrick, executive managing director; Jerry Hopkins, senior managing director; and Andrew Ragsdale, senior managing director—all coming over from Tulsa, Okla.-based Stan Johnson Co.

CBRE appointed Kevin Hatcher as senior vice president of industrial and logistics in Oakland, Calif. Hatcher will work closely with professionals in the firm’s East Bay Industrial group, including Bob Ferraro and Mike Barry. He will report to David Brennan, senior managing director of CBRE’s Sacramento, Central Valley and Northern Nevada offices, who also leads CBRE’s industrial and logistics practice in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.

doTerra, a rapidly growing direct sales Utah-based company that produces essential oils and other wellness products, is breaking ground on new office, medical and fulfillment space and expanding its manufacturing facility.