Malvern office building trades for $23M

Hayden Maguire Real Estate Funds has picked up its second acquisition and paid $23 million for 1200 Atwater Drive in Malvern, Pa.

The 151,447-square-foot building in the Atwater Corporate Center at Route 29 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike was constructed more than 10 years ago by Trammell Crow Co. as a regional headquarters for Allstate Insurance Co. At some point, Trammell Crow sold the building to Invesco Real Estate, which was the latest seller of the property.

The deal took a little longer than expected to get done.

"The transaction had some fits and starts," said Dan Mayock, who along with Adam Gillespie of SSH Real Estate arranged the off-market sale.

Mayock had the building under contract last year to a different, undisclosed buyer. But when Shire Pharmaceuticals decided not to build a new headquarters at Atwater and Endo Pharmaceuticals decided to lease out half of its new headquarters also in Atwater, the buyer got cold feet.

"Both of those things made that buyer nervous," Mayock said. "They said: 'No, thanks anyway.'"

The deal was dead but Mayock was confident another buyer would come along. The market started to strengthen and office space in the Malvern area was getting absorbed. Mayock was also aware Hayden was wrapping up the leasing of Cross Point and wanted a presence at the Malvern interchange.

A deal was struck.

Hayden Maguire is a fund based in West Conshohocken, Pa. It has a strong presence in Exton, Pa., the Valley Forge, Pa., area and Conshohocken, Pa. It was eager to get a building in Malvern, said Tony Hayden Jr.

"Malvern was a hole we had in our portfolio and with the purchase of this building we will now have options along those three stops of the Pennsylvania Turnpike," Hayden said.

The firm plans to continue looking for additional buys in Malvern and other markets where it has a presence.

When the building was constructed, Allstate initially took 90,000 square feet and was expected to eventually fill it out but that never happened. The insurer shrank its presence in the building over the years and the property was leased out to multiple tenants. At the time of the sale, the building had a 36,000-square-foot vacancy and an undisclosed company had signed a lease to backfill that space, bringing it up to 100 percent occupied, Hayden said.

In the meantime, not many buildings come up for sale in the Malvern market. Mayock happens to be trying to sell 2 Country View Road, a 49,000-square-foot office property just down the road from 1200 Atwater. It is 85 percent leased, constructed in the early 1980s and listed for $8.2 million.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal