Trinity Capital Advisors Agrees to Sell Downtown Charlotte’s NASCAR Plaza
October 31, 2012
Charlotte, NC – October 31, 2012 – Trinity Capital Advisors has entered into a purchase and sale agreement for NASCAR Plaza, one of downtown Charlotte’s most iconic office towers. Parkway Properties, Inc. has agreed to purchase the 390,000 square foot, Class A building.
Trinity Capital purchased the 20-story LEED Silver Certified tower in late December 2010, the commercial real estate investment firm’s first purchase of an existing Class A office tower in Charlotte’s central business district. The distressed asset was 37% occupied and purchased through a joint venture with Philadelphia’s Rubenstein Partners. The partnership’s purchase recapitalized the building, allowing for competitive rental rates that quickly attracted several significant tenants, including Chiquita Brands International. Chiquita’s tenancy, along with Heels.com’s corporate relocation and NASCAR Media Group’s expansion, increased the building’s occupancy to 88%.
Walker Collier, Partner at Trinity Capital, notes that while it’s bittersweet to sell the building after less than two years of ownership, he is proud of Trinity Capital’s work that created such value for the asset. “Rubenstein Partners and Trinity Capital‘s partnership worked tirelessly with our leasing and property management stakeholders to shift NASCAR Plaza from the tremendous distress it was under before it was purchased, creating the stabilized asset it is today,” Collier said. “NASCAR Plaza will serve as a good case study for Trinity Capital and the value creation that we work towards for our investors and partners.” Anne Vulcano and Jessica Brown of CBRE handled the building’s leasing duties and Trinity Partners managed the property for the ownership group. The sale is expected to close by the end of fourth quarter, 2012.
NASCAR Plaza’s sale caps off a successful year for Trinity Capital, highlighted by several high-profile acquisitions, including the recent purchase of most of Toringdon Office Park in Charlotte’s popular Ballantyne office submarket (including Toringdon 1, 6, 8, the parking deck, and 12 acres of land). Partner David Allen looks forward to continuing the firm’s success in 2013 with additional acquisitions of value-add real estate throughout the Southeast.
“We’re always searching for the right opportunities in our core markets across the Southeast,” Allen said. “It’s what we do best. We’re close to the market, we have a fantastic, diligent team in place, and we continue to develop relationships with key joint venture partners.”
Trinity Capital Advisors is a real estate investment firm that acquires and develops office, industrial, and mixed-use real estate in the Southeastern United States markets of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee. Trinity Capital invests directly from its series of real estate investment funds, and also partners with institutional investors to build or improve the workplace real estate in which it invests. Trinity Capital’s investment platform has two primary competitive advantages: through its sister company, Trinity Partners, the firm is connected to the marketplace, making the majority of its investments off-market, and Trinity Capital’s operating platform puts the firm closer to each investment, allowing it to produce outstanding returns for investor partners. Trinity Capital is currently investing from Trinity Capital Value Fund III.
