Private equity fund Rockpoint Group has secured $117 million towards converting their Meatpacking District office project, records filed with the city show.

Two mortgages totaling $117 million and backed by the lots where Rockpoint owns the leaseholdfour parcels at 412-419 West 14th Streetwere recorded in public records today. Prolific construction lender Bank of the Ozarks provided the funds.

A construction loan of $63 million and a $54 million project loan, which would cover ancillary costs associated with construction, closed earlier this month.

Rockpoint is planning a140,000-square-foot, four-story boutique office building on the site, according to previous reporting from The Real Deal. The project requires approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, TRD said.

The planned project recently signedBermuda-based insurance firm Argo Group to a 48,000-square-foot deal, as Crains New York Business first reported.

The project will use the address 413 West 14th Street, and Argo plans to relocate by the third quarter of this year, CBRE, Argos leasing representatives, have told Commercial Observer.

No one with Rockpoint was immediately available to respond to inquiries. A Bank of the Ozarks representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Rockpoint Secures Construction Funds For 14th Street Boutique Office Project - Commercial Observer

The McKinney City Council approved an assignment agreement with Playful Building One, LLC, that paves the way for Playful Corp. to move forward with its new headquarters office building in downtown McKinney.

McKinney-based Playful Corp. is an independent studio founded in 2013 that is thedeveloper of the Luckys Tale franchise and Creativerse. Playful CEO Paul Bettner previously was the founder and CEO of Newtoy, the creator ofthe highly successful gameWords with Friends, which was also based in McKinney.Playful currently has partnerships with Microsoft, GameStop and Sony.

Based on the assignment agreement, Playful will construct a minimum of 45,000 square feet of Class A office building and 125 surface parking spaces adjacent to the luxury apartment and mixed-use building currently under construction at the corner of Davis and Chestnut Streets.According to current designs by Playful, the company is planning to construct a minimum of 53,000 square feet of office space, larger than the 45,000 square feet laid out in the agreement. The parking associated with this building will be available to the public on nights and weekends.

We are thrilled Playful has chosen to remain in historic downtown and to build their headquarters here, said Mayor George Fuller. The company offers high-quality jobs in the entertainment industry, and to have a young and energetic company like Playful in downtown continues to add to the rich diversity of our business landscape.

In February 2016, the City Council approved a Chapter 380 incentive agreement with Columbus Realty Partners for a two-phased development of the former Collin County courthouse site.The assignment agreement approved by City Council on Tuesday provides the citys consent to assign the phase two incentives and construction obligations to Playful, which will be constructing the office building.

The uniqueness of historic downtown and the fact that we are embedded in this community is huge for our company, said Bettner. Most cities are trying to replicate this feeling with urban centers that promote live, work play. McKinney is the authentic version of that sentiment and we hope this development continues to enhance and extend that legacy.

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McKinney approves agreement with Playful Corp. for HQ - Star Local Media

Idaho Statesman

The building boom in big Treasure Valley office buildings is about to end Idaho Statesman Commercial construction in Downtown Boise had barely started to rebound from the Great Recession when the Gardner Co. decided in 2012 that the time had come to think big. Gardner executives liked the area's swelling population and pent-up demand, ...

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The building boom in big Treasure Valley office buildings is about to end - Idaho Statesman

Construction of the new 1300 Building in Midtown was on hold until MassMutual chose to abandon the suburbs and make the building the firm's new home. [Photo by Nate Billings, The Oklahoman]

Every year Oklahoman Real Estate Editor Richard Mize provides a snapshot of the office market for both downtown and the city as a whole. And his latest report, based on data accumulated by firm Price Edwards, was pretty bleak.

Office vacancy throughout the city jumped to 22 percent. Devon Energy, which had committed to leasing 250,000 square feet at the BOK Park Plaza, is looking to sublease that space following a dramatic change in oil since construction started on the 27-story tower.

An 11-story office building built by SandRidge Energy, meanwhile, remains empty a year after construction was completed.

Mize also noted the energy market is picking up, and smaller leases are beginning to backfill some of the space. Suburban office construction came to a halt, Mize noted. But downtown, construction continues and we're not just talking about BOK Park Plaza.

Andy Burnett, who along with Mark Beffort bought the historic Pioneer Building downtown, is in discussions with non-energy firms to anchor the building with a potential retail tenant to occupy the first floor.

Other developers are succeeding at attracting firms located in the suburbs. With renovations wrapping up at the Heritage Building (formerly known as the Journal Record Building), Bond Payne not only relocated his operations from north Oklahoma City but also drew an accounting firm, Eide Bailly, to make a similar move.

Eide Bailly, a regional certified public accounting and business advisory firm, will occupy the 20,000-square-foot first floor the Heritage Building starting in November.

Eide Bailly's current office of close to 60 staff members is housed in the Valliance Tower on Northwest Expressway, where the firm has resided on the 19th floor since 2005.

For Eide Bailly, the move downtown coincides with outgrowing their current space. It was when Greg Jones, partner-in-charge of Eide Bailly's Oklahoma City and Norman offices, discussed a downtown option with friend and client Payne that it all fell into place.

We evaluated a number of locations throughout Oklahoma City, but ultimately decided that The Heritage with its blend of classic and modern design and its downtown location would be a perfect fit for us as we move toward a future of growth and success, Jones said. We are excited for the move downtown and the opportunities it will bring, especially being in a building with so much history and significance in our community.

When Michael Nichols first bought a decades-old one-story office building at 1300 N Walker Ave., his plan was to build a small headquarters for his firm, Iconic Construction. But as the area developed, he realized the site could support a more ambitious two-story building.

After a little bit of development and reasoning, I determined it was best to make the property something great, Nichols said. So we decided to build a two-story building facing the property line with great street access.

The design, inspired by buildings Nichols saw in New Orleans, would draw heavily on that experience with the creation of balconies, awnings and the building being built out to the sidewalk. High casement windows were designed to give the appearance of the building having been built in the years after statehood.

Nichols saw no challenges in building a speculative office building with oil selling at $100 per barrel. He launched into design and planning while redeveloping the corner of NW 16 and Broadway for his own company.

The site was cleared. A sign showing the building rendering was posted. And then passers-by noticed everything had ground to a halt.

Once again, a suburban operation looking to move to the heart of the city filled the gap as Richard Labarthe, looking for a new home for MassMutual, discovered Nichols' plans.

My wife Pat Ball wanted to have brunch down here on a Sunday at Louie's, Lebarthe said. We noticed that Michael Nichols had his sign up. And Pat suggested looking at it.

The talks advanced quickly as Lebarthe worked with Mark Burson, a general agent at MassMutual, to create a new hub that would better appeal to young professionals. The major tweak requested was the addition of a glass-encased third floor for event space.

Only the first floor remains available with a bank set to open a retail branch. Lebarthe believes downtown area office space will continue to diversify as it stands out from traditional suburban locations.

There is so much energy and vibrancy here in Midtown, Lebarthe said. It's a mixture of different generations, many amenities and a lot of restaurants. It's in the middle of all the action.

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Space race: Non-energy firms claim newest downtown office space in Oklahoma City - NewsOK.com

Thestructures owner and architect call it a meditation room but that doesnt seem to do it justice. Its more of a pod. You might even argue its a cabin.

Whatever you call it, its in the basement of the building at 1110 Vermont Ave., NW to attract, retain, and appease the younger workforce of today, says Matthew Lefkowitz, a representative of the buildings owner, Epic. We wanted to think in the Millennial mindset.

With DCs office vacancy rateat itshighestpoint in decades,its not surprising that landlords are getting creative to keep occupantsin place. Lefkowitz says the pod is also intended for napping and yoga (the building offers free classes inside it). It was designed byarchitect Gavin Daniels of Wingate Hughes, who also included a game area, conference room, and bar and lounge space in the basement.

Daria Hall, who works in the building at nonprofit Americas Promise Alliance, says her employer often usestheconference room and lounge, but she and her colleagues werent sure what to make ofthe pod:We actually didnt quite know what it was supposed to be used for. But it sounds like meditationis that what you said?

There should be no ambiguity about the landlords next move: free beer. Lefkowitz says theyre in the process of getting a liquor license so they can have a keg in the basement on Fridays.

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Is This Thing What Millennials Really Want at The Office? - Washingtonian.com

A $36.5 million loan on a key building in the Reynolds Crossing development in western Henrico County has been refinanced.

The refinancing was on an eight-story building at 6603 W. Broad St., which is the headquarters for Philip Morris USA. That building is across the street from the former Reynolds Metals Co. building that is now headquarters for Altria Group Inc., the parent company of Philip Morris USA.

Coastal Federal Credit Union, based in North Carolina, refinanced the loan for a seven-year term, said J. Sargeant Reynolds Jr., a principal in the familys Reynolds Development partnership that owns Reynolds Crossing.

A 10-year commercial mortgage-backed security loan was coming due in August. The CMBS loan was the largest single loan among about 40 in the Richmond area that were slated in April to mature between then and August, according to Trepp LLC, a New York-based provider of analytics and commercial real estate information.

Mortgage broker Phillips Realty Capital help secure the financing on behalf of Reynolds Development.

The 15-year lease on the 222,057-square-foot building expires in 2024, Reynolds said. The building was built in 1968 and renovated in 2007.

Meanwhile, construction has started on a two-story medical office building that is the final office project in the 90-acre mixed-use development.

Tenants will be the Virginia Eye Institute and Dermatology Associates of Virginia. Both companies will have an ownership stake in the building with Reynolds Development, Reynolds said.

The 49,200-square-foot building is under construction on land that is northeast of the Shoppes at Reynolds Crossing retail center and north of the Walmart store. It will be built along the Interstate 64 eastbound on-ramp.

The building, which is estimated to cost $11.5 million to $12 million, should be finished by July 2018, Reynolds said.

Also underway in Reynolds Crossing is the development of a 2-acre site for additional retail fronting Forest Avenue. This piece is being developed by The Wilton Cos., a Henrico real estate company that bought the parcel last year from Reynolds Development.

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A $36.5 million loan on a Reynolds Crossing building is refinanced - Richmond.com

25 King St in Brisbane, worlds tallest timber building. Photograph: Aurecon

The famous Queenslander tradition of building houses upon wooden stilts is escalating to a whole other level on Thursday or 10 levels, to be exact.

The sod-turning ceremony at 25 King Street in Brisbane will be a groundbreaking event in more than just in the literal sense. When complete in 2018, 45 metres of the 52-metre office tower will qualify as the worlds highest to be held aloft not by steel and concrete, but timber and glue.

The project is the latest of a flurry of engineered wood towers in Australia using solutions such as cross-laminated timber (CLT), the load-bearing material on projects such as StrongBuilds The Gardens Macarthur affordable housing project in Campbelltown. Sydneys International House at Barangaroo is constructed from CLT and the similar Glulam method.

According to Chris Ammundsen, the Aurecon lead structural engineer behind 25 King Street, the CLT process involves glueing thick layers of wood together with the grain alternating at 90 degree angles .

Using timber as the primary structural load-bearing element creates interesting questions during the design process of any building, he says.

For example; how might we minimise the risk of chainsaw attack?

Ammundsen has a lot riding on the answers he came up with his company is setting up office within the building in order to enjoy the benefits of working in timber surrounds, which a PlanetArk study indicated can lead to a lower heart rate and blood pressure.

There are also environmental benefits where every tonne of cement creates 900kg of greenhouse gas emissions, engineered wood acts instead as a carbon sink.

The GBCA (Green Building Council of Australia) last year updated its Green Star accreditation to incentivise CLT, which chief executive Romilly Madew says: provides great thermal performance, which means they are efficient to heat and cool and save considerable amounts on utility bills.

An RMIT Lifecycle Assessment study conducted on Australias first timber high-rise completed in 2013, Lend Leases 10-storey Forte building in Melbourne, concluded it would generate 22% lower global warming emissions over its lifespan than a traditional concrete build.

The construction site for engineered timber projects also generates less noise pollution, and the structures can be erected much faster with fewer workers: Lend Lease claims it will cut six weeks off the construction time of 25 King Street by using timber.

Thats because they are assembled like supersized flatpack furniture, says Nick Hewson, a technical manager with engineered wood suppliers XLam.

Theres a speed and simplicity in construction, he says. Think of assembling a big piece of furniture there are even oversized screws and slats.

He says the radically different building style is one of the main barriers to the growth of CLT in Australia, where a construction industry used to grappling with each project requirement as it arises instead needs to revamp workflows to ensure everything is on-site ready to go from day one. Anyone who has assembled an Ikea bookshelf can attest that a single piece missing from a flatpack can result in construction delays, structural deficiencies, and even desperate attempts to decipher oblique Swedish instruction manuals.

Just like Ikea products, CLT components need to be shipped in all the way from Europe, where modern engineered timber techniques were first developed and are far more widely used.

To address this, XLam is building Australias first engineered wood factory just outside Albury Wodonga, a town that sits on the border between Victoria and NSW and will be able to service both major metropolitan markets once it is operational early next year.

A UN annual review in 2015-16 found that production of CLT is expanding globally from 650,000 to 700,000 cubic metres in 2015 to a projected 1 million cubic metres last year, but concrete remains well ahead.

Safety is another obstacle to growth. As last weeks Grenfell Tower apartment block blaze in London so tragically illustrated, incorporating flammable materials into building design can be fatal so isnt adding wood into the mix a recipe for disaster?

Hewson says that when Australias building code changed last year to allow for medium-rise timber buildings, the rules were based on requiring sprinklers in buildings and cladding in fire-rated plasterboard a measure he conceded would lessen the psychological benefits of exposed wood in buildings. Where architects dont want to cover the wood in plasterboard, an alternative is using timber thick enough to self-protect.

[With thick wood] you can subject it to long periods of fire exposure, it starts to char which insulates the material inside. It can burn through slowly but maintain its strength, he says.

Ken Slattery, the chief executive of Cement Concrete and Aggregates Australia, has a simple observation to make in response to the new competition: concrete doesnt burn.

He says that concrete remains the most-used building material on earth as it is flexible, durable and long-lasting.

The rise of CLT offers another approach that builds upon the strengths of concrete in a quite literal sense engineered wood extensions slapped on top of existing buildings, as seen in the use of XLam timber in a 10-storey hotel being built on top of a six-storey office block in Melbournes Southbank.

According to Hewson, the fact CLT is 20% lighter than concrete allowed extra room to grow for the Adina Apartment Hotels project, due to start construction later this year for completion in 2018. He says: A lot of buildings from the 50s and 60s are looking a bit tired, and owners want to rejuvenate - so why not vertical extensions?

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Tall timber: the world's tallest wooden office building to open in Brisbane - The Guardian

Developer says 11-story complex will have outdoor collaborative space, gym

By Bethany Rodgers

Published: 2017.06.20 12:09

Rendering of plans for an 11-story office building at Pike & Rose in North Bethesda.

Via Federal Realty Investment Trust

The developer of Pike & Rose has released the first glimpse of an 11-story office building that will claim a space in the burgeoning North Bethesda neighborhood.

Tenant construction on 909 Rose, which will stand at the corner of Rockville Pike and Rose Avenue, could get started in fall of 2019, and the first occupants could move in early the following year, according to a press release from developer Federal Realty Investment Trust. The 208,527-square-foot building will be the second office complex in Pike & Rose, with the first leased quickly to corporate tenants such as Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Regus and Hilti.

Pike & Rose offers tenants proximity to transit and boasts an array of dining, shopping and housing options; Federal Realty executives are even making plans to move their own employees to the site, according to the release.

The office building will form part of Pike & Roses second phase, which celebrated the opening of its first retail site in April with the relocation of REI. The first phase included the luxury iPic Movie Theaters, new restaurants such as Del Friscos Grille and the performance venue AMP by Strathmore. Residential complexes at the Pallas and PerSei provided a combined 493 apartment units.

The new building, 909 Rose, will feature meeting rooms, outdoor collaborative spaces with on-demand catering and Wi-Fi, bike storage and a gym with showers.

Business thrives when its people thrive, so were designing 909 Rose with that in mind, said Chris Weilminster, president of mixed use at Federal Realty.

Image of lobby at 909 Rose, the next office building planned for the Pike & Rose development. Via Federal Realty Investment Trust.

Post updated to correct construction schedule.

Department of Liquor Controls director toned down proposed ID policy before it goes into effect July 1

Few speakers Monday night opposed measure that will prevent city police officers from enforcing federal immigration law

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Introducing 909 Rose, Pike & Rose's Next Office Building - BethesdaMagazine.com

As a $1.6 billion plan to transform the iconic Farley Post Office Building into a transportation hub takes shape, critics say the money could be better spent on work more directly impacting commuters. NY1's Jose Martinez filed the following report.

It's Governor Andrew Cuomo's transit project of the moment: expanding Penn Station across Eighth Avenue into the old Farley Post Office Building.

Last week, the completion of a concourse linked the two sites for the first time.

"It is a beginning of a transformation," Cuomo said. "This is also Door Number 1. Door Number 2 is when we finish the train hall."

But the $1.6 billion project is not just about rail transportation. When completed, the Farley Building will have nearly three times the amount of space for retail as there will be for Amtrak and the Long Island Rail Road.

Which is why critics lined up at a news conference Tuesday blasting the deal. They said public funds should not be covering the bulk of the costs for a project that's more shopping mall than train hall at a time when the region's transit system is plagued by delays and breakdowns.

"We need to get down and tackle the real issues that are affecting infrastructure and transit in New York," said Charles Khan of the Strong Economy for All Coalition. "I promise you that it's not the lack of shopping malls and it's not that there's a lack of TV screens inside our transit hubs."

A plan for private developers to create the new transit hub has been around since the early 1990s, but it has gained traction under Cuomo.

"It's just going to privatize and sell off a public asset to the very wealthy yet again. We're here to say no," said Pete Sikora of the Center for Popular Democracy.

A spokesman for the governor called the protest "misguided," and boosters said the public-private renovation of the landmark will ultimately be a plus for the city.

"When you have this type of space and it's not being utilized in a positive way, that's really not good for the economy," said Gary La Barbera of the Building and Construction Traces Council of Greater New York.

And after a generation of plans, the renderings may finally become reality.

What will eventually be known as the Moynihan Train Hall, with its attached 700,000 square feet of retail space, is supposed to open by late 2020, early 2021.

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Money to Turn Post Office Near Penn Station into Transportation Hub Could Be Better Spent, Critics Say - NY1

Charlotte Business Journal

Vacant office building in University City sells for $12.3M Charlotte Business Journal A University City office building that has sat empty since Allstate Corp. (NYSE: ALL) relocated its local offices has been sold. 401 McCullough, a three-story, 191,681-square-foot office building that sits on 32.6 acres fronting Interstate 85, was sold ... and more »

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Vacant office building in University City sells for $12.3M - Charlotte Business Journal