Richmond, Va.-based Lingerfelt CommonWealth Partners LLC said Wednesday it has acquired One Liberty Square and Two Liberty Square, a pair of downtown Greenville office towers.
Terms weren’t disclosed, but the property was sold free and clear of existing debt, said Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP, which marketed the property on behalf of the seller, HB Liberty Square LLC.
The Liberty Square towers, at 55 and 75 Beattie Place, total 445,612 square feet and are 81 percent occupied. The tenant base is anchored by Resurgent Capital, Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing, Gallivan, White & Boyd, Dority & Manning, and the Commerce Club, among others. One and Two Liberty Square were built in 1983 and 1986, respectively, and received multimillion-dollar renovations in 2006 and 2014.
“We have been evaluating Greenville and the greater Upstate area for several years,” said Ryan Lingerfelt, president and CIO of Lingerfelt CommonWealth. “Greenville continues to show strengthening fundamentals, particularly downtown which has experienced seven consecutive years of positive net absorption, strong rental rate growth, and low vacancy rates.”
“The Liberty Square acquisition fits perfectly within our value-added strategy of acquiring high-quality real estate in strong secondary and tertiary markets like Greenville,” Lingerfelt said.
The towers’ occupancy rate is expected to drop to approximately 70 percent after a larger tenant vacates nearly 50,000 square feet, he said.
That tenant wasn’t identified, but the move will allow “us the unique opportunity to go to market offering some of the largest and most attractive blocks of space in downtown Greenville where vacancy rates continue to decline and new supply is limited,” Lingerfelt said.
Commonwealth Commercial Partners, the company’s property management affiliate, will handle all aspects of the day-to-day asset and property management. CBRE will continue to handle the leasing and marketing.
The HFF investment sales team representing the seller was led by senior managing director Ryan Clutter, managing director Ralph Smalley, director Scot Humphrey and associate director Kelly Kuykendall.
The Class A office buildings “are two iconic assets on the Greenville, South Carolina, skyline that offer a tremendous opportunity to acquire significant critical mass in the Greenville central business district,” Clutter said. “Institutional capital is taking note of the vibrant economy in Greenville and throughout the state of South Carolina and we believe we will continue to see more and more capital targeting this region in the year ahead.”
Lingerfelt CommonWealth Partners is a real estate investment management firm with additional offices in Nashville, Tenn.; Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.; Greensboro, N.C.; and Hampton Roads, Va. Together with its predecessors in the private sector and public REIT sector, its partners have built, acquired and managed nearly 20 million square-feet of commercial real estate valued at approximately $2 billion across the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
