Courtesy / Porta & Co.
The building is occupied by a T-Mobile Customer Care Center under a triple net lease arrangement.
May 21, 2020
T-Mobile will have a new landlord at its Oakland site
Courtesy / Porta & Co.
133 First Park Drive in Oakland attracted national interest when it went on the market through a call for offers procedure.
A high-quality property in Oakland hit all the right marks to attract substantial interest from investors around the region and the country.
But it was J.B. Brown & Sons, a commercial property management and development company in Portland, that submitted the winning offer of $10.7 million.
J.B. Brown & Sons bought 133 First Park Drive from Lexington Realty Trust in a deal that closed April 17.
Joseph Porta, Charles Day and Mackenzie Simpson of Porta & Co. brokered the transaction using the “call for offers” mechanism, which allowed the seller to review multiple offers submitted by Jan. 23.
The property lies within the FirstPark business park, established in 2000 by the Kennebec Regional Development Authority on 285 acres.
The property is a 78,610-square-foot Class A, single-story office building located on 26.2 acres with ample parking. It’s occupied by a T-Mobile customer care center under a triple net lease arrangement, which requires the tenant to pay ongoing expenses such as insurance and maintenance as well as rent and utilities. T-Mobile’s current lease term expires Aug. 31, 2027, and includes three 5-year renewal options.
The site was built in 2005 for T-Mobile, said Day, who, with Porta and Simpson, represented the seller. Lexington Realty Trust is a national real estate investment trust that is selling its office holdings in order to focus on industrial properties, he explained.
The call for offers went out last fall.
“We had a lot of interest,” he said. “Based on it being a triple net asset and there being a single tenant, it attracted a lot of potential buyers, not just in the region but around the country.”
The team fielded at least five offers. They had high confidence in J.B. Brown & Sons, which was comfortable with the tenant as a strong national company, the condition of the asset, the length of the lease and the triple net deal, Day said. The company executed the deal as an exchange under section 1031 of the IRS tax code.
The call for offers process is a straightforward way to go live with marketing materials and set a deadline for offers, he explained.
Courtesy / Porta & Co.
The interior features colorful design schemes along a corridor that splits into wings.
“If you have multiple buyers, it helps the seller get a higher sales price,” he said. “It’s a way for the seller to manage the process. At the same time, historically, we seem to find the best buyer at the best price.”
Single-tenant, triple net investment deals are something of a rarity in Maine, he added.
“It attracted a lot of interest from larger, institutional buyers,” he said.
For Brown, he said, the property is a long-term, cash-flow investment. The tenant had renewed its lease about six months before the property went on the market and has invested over $7 million in improvements in recent years.
“Nationally, this ranks as one of T-Mobile’s best-performing customer care centers,” he said. “It’s received awards on a national basis for its level of customer service.”
The center employs almost 1,000 people, he said.
“It’s a critical piece of the economy in central Maine, and they’re good-paying jobs,” he said.
The interior design includes a middle corridor that splits into wings which, along with the customer care units, also house training facility, café and T-Mobile retail store.
“It’s a very active, engaging environment,” he said.
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