Park Square is the premier mixed-use project in the Albuquerque Uptown submarket. The project consists of two office towers totaling 275,000 square feet and 54,000 square feet of retail shop space. Tom Jenkins was part of a team that sold one of the office towers (One Park) and the Shops at Park Square to an investor. As part of the marketing program for the sale of the asset the listing team advocated that there was significant upside through a lease up of the existing vacancies and the in-place rents were below market.

Challenge

Upon completion of acquisition and consolidation of ownership of One Park Square and Two Park Square new ownership engaged our team as the leasing brokers for the office towers. At the time of the sale there were negative aspects to the property; there had not been a new lease at the building in over 30 months and the previous ownership had a reputation of being slow and difficult to deal with in completing leases with renewing and prospective tenants.

Solutions

The rent roll was repositioned by renewing expiring tenants and aggressively marketing the vacant space for lease. Upon being awarded the assignment, the leasing team increased the rental rates immediately by 10% with a scheduled incremental increase that were directly tied to predetermined occupancy levels. A strong mix of national, regional and local credit Tenants were identified, and lease expirations were staggered to avoid a heavy potential roll-over in any future year.

Results

The team’s efforts resulted in leasing up the office buildings an occupancy of 93% within 24 months of winning the assignment while increasing rental rates by more than 20%.