Jamestown transformed low-slung warehouses on Atlanta's Upper Westside into trendy offices, and now its efforts have paid off handsomely.
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The Atlanta-based development firm sold Allied Studios, its adaptive reuse of three former warehouse buildings at 1401 and 1435 Hills Place and 1357 Collier Road, for $76.6M, according to a real estate sales listing in the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Boston-based The Davis Cos. bought the properties, which span 235K SF. Jamestown acquired them in 2019 for $22M, Bisnow previously reported.
The developer's plans to turn the warehouses into office space coveted by technology firms bore fruit in 2022 when California-based defense technology company Anduril leased 180K SF at the project. It said at the time that it would spend $60M to turn Allied Studios into its manufacturing and research hub with 180 new jobs.
“Our vision was to reposition these former industrial buildings for today’s innovation economy,” Jamestown CEO Matt Bronfman said in a statement to Bisnow. “Having completed extensive infrastructure and utility upgrades to the buildings and fully leased the space, we saw an opportunity to leverage that status in the market.”
The price Davis paid was the third most spent on an Atlanta office this year. Town Lane and Cousins Properties’ purchase of the Proscenium office tower in Midtown for $83M was the most expensive office sale in Metro Atlanta so far in 2024, followed by B Group Capital Management’s $81M Ameris Centre acquisition in Buckhead, according to CBRE.
Brendan Richards, vice president of investments with Davis, said the firm bought Allied Studios because of its proximity to Georgia Tech and other universities that help generate tenants leasing research and development space.
“Acquiring a state-of-the-art facility in this Atlanta submarket underscores our commitment to building a strong high-tech research and development portfolio,” Richards said in a statement. “The strategic location, coupled with a thriving talent pool from surrounding institutions and universities, ensures this campus will continue to support innovation and growth of advanced R&D and manufacturing efforts in the region.”
Investors shopping for office buildings are either looking at trophy properties or buildings that can become trophies because of their location and potential for upgrades, said CBRE Vice Chairman Will Yowell, who brokered the sale of Proscenium. It is unclear if any brokers were involved in the Allied Studios sale.
“I think you’re finding that capital, the investors out there, are seeking out buildings, and they’re basically going to follow where the leasing is taking place,” Yowell said.
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