Kitchen Fresh has leased a 1,897-square-foot retail space at Fountains at Gateway, the new Class A office and retail development in Murfreesboro, announced developer Scott Graby, president of Hearthstone Properties.

Kitchen Fresh is a new, fast-casual restaurant concept built around healthy, organic, chef-inspired food. All food is made from scratch and fresh-to-order.

Meals are served in bowls with ingredients selected by each customer and prepared by Kitchen Fresh staff. Small, regular, family and kid-size bowls are available for dine in or take out. Customers select from a complex carbohydrate base of rice, quinoa or noodles; a choice of vegetable and healthy protein; and one of the restaurant's handcrafted sauces. Kitchen Fresh also serves cold-pressed juice as well as its own teas, lemonades, almond milk and almond-milk coffee hybrid drinks.

Kitchen Fresh co-owners Brandon Whitsett and Asmir Pervan are successful business owners of Core Construction & Consulting, a national remodeling company and insurance claims specialist based in Murfreesboro. Kitchen Fresh is the first restaurant venture for the partners and will be operated by a general manager and head chef. Whitsett said they plan to franchise the concept.

"There is growing demand for delicious, healthy food served quickly, and our new brand is based on this principle," said Whitsett. "We selected Fountains at Gateway for our first restaurant because of its upscale design and location as well as the appeal of its work-play community environment. The convenience and quality of our food will attract local business and medical professionals during the day and families and young professionals on evenings and weekends."

Kitchen Fresh will be located in the 11,200-square-foot retail building facing Medical Center Parkway. The restaurant's space is adjacent to the outdoor fireplace and opens onto the pocket park.

"Kitchen Fresh is an exciting new concept that taps into the growing demand for wholesome food served in a fast-casual atmosphere," said Graby. "Their space will have amazing views of Park Stage, which will host live musical performances. Brandon and Asmir's connections to the music industry will be integral to the scheduling of artists and help us bring great talent to Fountains."

Interior construction of the restaurant is slated to begin this spring with an expected opening this summer.

About Fountains at Gateway

Fountains at Gateway is a 31-acre, Class A mixed-use development located at 1500 Medical Center Parkway in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The $80 million development will include 400,000 square feet of office space in three office buildings, 70,000 square feet of retail in three free-standing buildings and street-level retail space in the office buildings, as well as a 100-unit apartment community and a mid-size business hotel.

Phase one of the development includes a four-story, 105,500-square-foot office building and two retail buildings totaling 33,200 square feet. Office building construction is now complete and site work is nearing completion. The first retail building, with 11,200-square-feet of space, is under construction and will be completed this spring.

Kitchen Fresh joins Burger Republic, Tom+Chee, Fuzzy's Taco Shop, Board & Brush, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Tressler & Associates/Tressler Title, and Anytime Fitness in leasing retail space at Fountains at Gateway.

Fountains at Gateway is developed by Hearthstone Properties, a Murfreesboro commercial real estate investment company. The architect and contractor are H. Michael Hindman Architects and Solomon Builders, respectively. Hearthstone is handling retail leasing, and Bill Adair at JLL is handling office leasing.

More information can be found at http://www.FountainsAtGateway.com .

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New restaurant in Murfreesboro - Murfreesboro News and Radio - Wgnsradio

A construction project that started quietly a couple of years ago is finally underway at the intersection of State Highway 30 and Veterans Memorial Parkway.

Concrete has been poured and walls have started going up on a pair of office buildings located across the highway from West Hill Mall.

A spokesman with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice told The Item on Monday that TDCJ plans to move two of its Huntsville divisions into those offices when they are completed later this year.

The Texas Facilities Commission, through a competitive bidding process, awarded a contract and (those offices) will be used by the Board of Pardons and Parole and the Office of Inspector General,TDCJ spokesman Jason Clark said of the buildings under construction near the Tractor Supply store on Veterans Memorial Parkway.Approximately 230 employees will relocate to the building once its completed. The planned completion date is August 2017.

Currently, the Board of Pardons and Parole has an office on 11th Street in Huntsville. The Huntsville Office of Inspector General is located on Lake Road.

According to Clark, the Office of Inspector General needs more space.

The new location will be better-suited for their needs, Clark said of the OIG. Additional TDCJ staff will fill the office space at Lake Road when OIG moves.

The Board of Pardons and Parole will be consolidating offices when it relocates into the space on Veterans Memorial Parkway and Highway 30.

The West Hill Group LP is in charge of the 10-acre construction project, but because of a confidentiality agreement signed by the developers, people involved with the project were unable to comment at this time.

City of Huntsville staff members are excited about another new project that has gotten underway in the past month or so. In addition to a new H-E-B grocery store being built soon at the site of an aging shopping center on 11th Street, a new Sears store has opened next to Academy in the Ravenwood Shopping Center and a new Firestone store is under construction on Interstate 45 near Home Depot.

It will be privately owned lease space,City of Huntsville economic development director Aron Kulhavy said of the new office space, so itwill be on the tax rolls.

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TDCJ to move offices into new buildings - Huntsville Item

BizTimes.com (Milwaukee)

Real estate market still positive at start of 2017, with lots of new development Milwaukee Business Journal The association counted 283,000 square feet of office space under construction, with another 525,000 planned to break ground in the next two years. The industrial market in southeast Wisconsin also is active, with more than 2.2 million square feet of ... Metro Milwaukee commercial real estate market coolsBizTimes.com (Milwaukee) all 2 news articles »

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Real estate market still positive at start of 2017, with lots of new development - Milwaukee Business Journal

Michael Barrett Gazette staff GazetteMike

The growing need for more medical office space is prompting construction of an eye-catching new complex at a visible intersection in Gastonia.

The multi-level building rising at 2315 Court Drive, along the busy corner of North New Hope Road, is one of CaroMont Health's latest building projects. When completed later this year, it will include 47,000 square feet of space for offices, conference rooms and shared work space.

CaroMont Health is the nonprofit umbrella for the 435-bed CaroMont Regional Medical Center, which many people access by turning onto Court Drive from New Hope Road. CaroMont spokeswoman Dallas Butler said the new building will play a key role in the hospital's operations, from a non-clinical perspective.

"The new building will relocate several non-clinical business units away from the hospital property," she said.

"Non-clinical" essentially means that patients won't be visiting the building for doctor's appointments, lab work or the like.

The corner property will allow more convenient access to several of CaroMont's departments. That in turn will allow the health-care organization to put its actual square footage within the medical center to better use.

"Most importantly, it will open up space in the hospital to be used for the expansion of clinical operations," Butler said.

The 4.3-acre lot is part of the Summit Crossing medical office community.

CaroMont Health acquired the property from Cosmic Holdings LLC almost a year ago for $654,000. The real estate is now valued at about$739,000, according to the Gaston County Tax Office.

Construction is expected to be completed late this summer.

You can reach Michael Barrett at 704-869-1826 or on Twitter @GazetteMike.

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New CaroMont office building should open in late summer - Gaston Gazette

Though strong, the Jefferson Parish office market remained flat in the past year as the area continued to recover from slumping oil prices. But commercial realtors say there is possible growth on the horizon.

Courtesy jeffparish.net

A recent year-end report by Corporate Realty shows occupancy rates for the Metairie market slightly increased from 92 percent in 2015 to 92.3 percent last year. Rental rates for Class A buildings range from $21 to $26 per square foot, and space for Class B buildings rent from $18 to $22.

Corporate Realty leasing director and broker associate Bruce Sossaman said engineering and exploration companies tied to the oil and gas industry reduced and gave back leased space in 2015 and 2016 to cut costs due to plummeting prices. Sossamon said if the price of oil continues to rise, he expects these same companies to reacquire this space by the third or fourth quarter of this year.

Even if oil prices dont go back up, there shouldnt be any more of a negative impact on the office market, he said.

New leases in the market include an 18,000-square-foot space at One Lakeway Center for its IT department and another 14,000 square feet at the Galleria for Regus executive suites. This is the second Metairie location for Regus, a provider of ready-to-go office spaces. The firm also leases half a floor at the Lakeway Center.

The largest new lease in the past year is Crescent Bank & Trust, which relocated from Elmwood to 2121 Airline Drive, renting 33,000 square feet for back office space. Formerly known as the Cox Communications building, the six-story, 123,000-square-foot property sold to the parent company of insurance firm Burns & Wilcox last year for the firms New Orleans office.

This new tenant pushes the buildings occupancy to more than 90 percent.

Sossamon said there will be no new construction of office buildings with more than 100,000 square feet until rents are high enough to justify it. He added the scarcity of land and rising construction costs make this endeavor unfeasible for developers.

Maria McLellan, an independent commercial broker who represents tenants, said because the Metairie market is so expensive, many companies are moving their operations to St. Charles Parish, particularly St. Rose, where there is more available office and warehouse space.

This is the highest rents have ever been, she said. Its definitely a landlords market.

McLellan said there has been a spillover effect into Elmwood, making real estate more valuable in the area. This in turn has made it impractical for developers to buy land and to build new warehouses and offices.

McLellans clients are now building out this space and leasing it as flex space, which is a conversion from warehouse to office space.

Parking is free, and single-story building rents are much lower, she said. You can also finish out the open space how you want it.

Commercial broker Robert Hand, president of Louisiana Commercial Realty, said the strong Metairie office market is due in large part to the high prices in downtown New Orleans. Rental rates for Class A buildings in the Central Business District range from $16 to $20 per square foot.

These prices do not include parking and operating costs; whereas, leases for Class A space in Metairie typically include these amenities. Hand said there is approximately 1 million square feet of vacant office space in the CBD, and 80 percent of that is full-floor space. Hand said this trend has not affected Metairie yet.

You just dont have those kind of companies that require that much space coming into the city, he said.

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Jefferson office market could strengthen in coming months - New Orleans CityBusiness (blog)

It has recently been announced that Amazon are behind one of the newest buildings set to go under construction in Seattle. Spanning 17 stories, the build will be set on the site of a former hotel at 2205 Seventh Avenue, where a number of options have been bought forward by Graphite Design Group, who Amazon are currently working with.

Amazon associates Acorn Development LLC previously bought the property and all necessary rights at the end of December last year for over $12 million. The new build will embed sustainable features, where the preferred design has been described as an urban treehouse, adopting a recessed centre bay, revealing an internal stair structure. On each side, overhanging blocks which cascade up the building will highlight this unique design, with a terrace placed on the side.

The new building highlights Amazons increased dominance within the US market, with an increased number of part time workers, warehouses and networks across the country. Back in January, Amazon informed Bloomberg that they would be creating over 100,000 new roles within the next 18 months.

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Amazon's new office building will adopt a distinct design - Construction Global

One of the most visible symbols of San Franciscos technology-fueled boom is nearing completion and reshaping the citys skyline.

Builders laid the final beam yesterday for Salesforce Tower, a $1 billion skyscraper that now stands as the tallest office building west of Chicago. The1,070-foot (326-meter) tower is set to be finished this summer and the main tenant, Salesforce.com Inc., expects to start moving in by the end of the year.

The Salesforce Tower under construction in San Francisco, on April 3.

Photographer: Michael Short/Bloomberg

Developers Boston Properties Inc. and Hines broke ground on the 1.4 million-square-foot (130,000-square-meter) tower in 2013, near the start of an economic surge that has sent real estate prices soaring. Its the biggest and most ambitious project in what city Supervisor Jane Kim called San Franciscos largest construction boom since the 1906 earthquake. It also shows the weight of Salesforce, founded 18 years ago and now the citys biggest tech tenant.

Salesforce Tower is the beacon of the new economy, said J.D. Lumpkin, managing principal of the San Francisco office of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., who helped represent Boston Properties in Salesforces record 2014 lease. Its an aspirational thing for companies here, that you can build something from scratch over the course of 20 years that employs thousands of people in San Francisco, and tens of thousands of people around the world.

Salesforce, whose software helps businesses with tasks such as managing customer relationships and marketing to consumers, is taking 714,000 square feet at the building, which supplanted the Transamerica Pyramid as the citys tallest. Tenants also will include management-consulting firms Bain & Co. and Accenture Plc. About 400,000 square feet is still available, Bob Pester, executive vice president for the San Francisco region at Boston Properties, said in an interview at Bloombergs office in the city.

The company has competition from other new buildings rising. There is 5.9 million square feet of offices under construction in the city, with about 38.8 percent pre-leased, according to data from property brokerage Savills Studley Inc. San Francisco had about 81 million square feet of offices as of the end of 2016.

Rod Diehl, Boston Properties senior vice president for leasing, said the company is seeing demand from a mix of businesses. Touring activity by potential tenants has increased fourfold in the past 60 days, Pestersaid.

I can tell you that I dont lose sleep at night at all about that space, he said. This is not on my radar screen as something to worry about.

Boston Properties had started the building, formerly known as Transbay Tower, on a speculative basis before signing Salesforce as a tenant. While that was a risk, we saw momentum in the market as far as leasing activity, and we thought it was a very measured risk, Pester said.

Mort Zuckerman,co-founder and chairman emeritus of Boston Properties, was a champion of the building and was instrumental in negotiating directly with Salesforce Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff for the lease deal, Pester said.

Benioff during a topping off ceremony for the tower, on April 6.

Photographer: Michael Short/Bloomberg

Benioff, who co-founded Salesforce and is a prominent philanthropist in the city, said the building is the ultimate expression of the inspiration he felt when walking in San Francisco as a boy with his grandfather, who was a city supervisor, watching the Transamerica Pyramid tower being built.

He used to tell me how the future of San Francisco was rising up, he said at the ceremony yesterday for the topping off of the building. That inspiration really gave birth to Salesforce, which develops cloud-based software designed to boost salespeoples productivity.

Salesforce is leasing the bottom half of the tower, plus the 60th and 61st floors. Views from the 61st floor, to be the highest occupied space, show much of the Bay Area, from the Bay and Golden Gate bridges to the 101 and 280 highways snaking to the south toward San Bruno Mountain.

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The 61st floor will be used by Salesforce for meetings, conferences and programs, and will be open in the evenings to city and local organizations for their own programs, Benioff said. It will be known as the Ohana floor, taking the Hawaiian word for family, a touchstone in the companys corporate philosophy of treating not only its own employees like family, but being open and involved with the surrounding community.

The 60th floor will be almost a deconstructed executive briefing center, saidElizabeth Pinkham, the companys executive vice president for global real estate. It will have sliding glass walls, allowing it to be configured to the specific event, be it large training sessions or more private meetings.

Pinkham said the company is hoping the building will be ready for visitors before the next Dreamforce corporate conference in November, where clients from all over the world converge to attend sessions designed to build their skills and interact with peers and corporate leaders. Last year about 170,000 people attended.

One of the most visible symbols of San Franciscos technology-fueled boom is reshaping the citys skyline.

Salesforce Tower is beside the Transbay Transit Center, a $6 billion project that will tie together 11 transportation systems. In addition to transit, the center will feature a 5.4-acre (2.2-hectare) rooftop park. Both the skyscraper and the transit hub were designed by the architecture firm Pelli Clarke Pelli.

The building also is across the street from Millennium Tower, a luxury-condominium building that has tilted and sunk several inches into the earth. At the topping off ceremony, Pester of Boston Properties made a point of saying his skyscrapers foundation is drilled more than 300 feet into bedrock, baby.

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San Francisco Skyline Remade by Tallest West Coast Office Tower ... - Bloomberg

The Kansas Legislatures committee that monitors state building projects Thursday accepted the offer of a private firm to tour Docking State Office Building and formulate cost estimates for renovating or repurposing the Topeka building slated for demolition.

The administration of Gov. Sam Brownback has sought to take a wrecking ball to the tall office structure west of the Capitol after relocating hundreds of state employees to newly leased space in Topeka. That plan stalled when the 2016 Legislature compelled Brownback to sever a contract with a bank to finance construction of a $20 million heating and cooling plant to replace systems located in the basement of Docking.

The bipartisan Joint Committee on State Building Construction agreed to allow McGowan Gordon Construction, with offices in Manhattan and Kansas City, Mo., to tour Docking for the purpose of evaluating alternatives for the mothballed office building. The company offered to develop a report on possible uses of Docking at no cost to the state.

We require good information to make good decisions around here, said Rep. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican on the committee.

The Kansas Department of Administration was instructed by the joint committees chairman to cooperate with McGowan Gordon staff on a tour of Docking.

I hope you guys are on board to do that, said Rep. Adam Lusker, the Frontenac Democrat who chairs the committee.

Were certainly happy to give them a tour, said Sarah Shipman, secretary of the state Department of Administration.

The McGowan Gordon construction company was involved in the Flint Hills Discovery Center and the Kansas Department of Agriculture administration building, both in Manhattan; the KBI Forensic Science Center in Topeka; and the American Museum of Natural History at Prairiefire in Johnson County.

The joint committee tentatively scheduled its own tour of Docking for April 26. There is an expectation lawmakers on the panel will review the construction firms findings later in the 2017 legislative session, said Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka.

I feel, finally, the Legislature is taking some control of this project, Kelly said.

Sen. John Skubal, R-Overland Park, said he was curious whether the committee would have interest in hiring a company to propose a design-build plan authored by a builder in conjunction with an architect. Renovation of Docking will be complex if it involves removal of several floors and retention of the heating and cooling infrastructure in the basement, he said.

This is going to be very, very complicated. I think that (design-build) delivery system for this building, as complicated as its going to be, may be something that we should investigate, he said.

Lusker said the committee could end up recommending a design-build approach, but input from McGowan Gordon staff appears to be a logical move.

This is a first step in a seemingly long process, the chairman said. After we get some findings back from the contractor, then maybe we can look at our other options if there are options for the building, which hopefully there will be.

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Kansas House-Senate panel seeking fresh insight into future of Docking - Topeka Capital Journal

The Kansas Legislatures committee that monitors state building projects Thursday accepted the offer of a private firm to tour Docking State Office Building and formulate cost estimates for renovating or re-purposing the Topeka building slated for demolition.

The administration of Gov. Sam Brownback has sought to take a wrecking ball to the tall office structure west of the Capitol after relocating hundreds of state employees to newly leased space in Topeka. That plan stalled when the 2016 Legislature compelled Brownback to sever a contract with a bank to finance construction of a $20 million heating and cooling plant to replace systems located in the basement of Docking.

The bipartisan Joint Committee on State Building Construction agreed to allow McGowan Gordon Construction, with offices in Manhattan and Kansas City, Mo., to tour Docking for the purpose of evaluating alternatives for the mothballed office building. The company offered to develop a report on possible uses of Docking at no cost to the state.

We require good information to make good decisions around here, said Rep. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican on the committee.

The Kansas Department of Administration was instructed by the joint committees chairman to cooperate with McGowan Gordon staff on a tour of Docking.

I hope you guys are on board to do that, said Rep. Adam Lusker, the Frontenac Democrat who chairs the committee.

Were certainly happy to give them a tour, said Sarah Shipman, secretary of the state Department of Administration.

The McGowan Gordon construction company was involved in the Flint Hills Discovery Center and the Kansas Department of Agriculture administration building, both in Manhattan; the KBI Forensic Science Center in Topeka; and the American Museum of Natural History at Prairiefire in Johnson County.

The House-Senate committee tentatively scheduled its own tour of Docking for April 26. There is an expectation lawmakers on the panel will review the construction firms findings later in the 2017 legislative session, said Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka.

I feel, finally, the Legislature is taking some control of this project, Kelly said.

Sen. John Skubal, R-Overland Park, said he was curious if the committee would have interest in hiring a company to propose a design-build plan authored by a builder in conjunction with an architect. Renovation of Docking will be complex if it involves removal of several floors of Docking and retention of the heating-and-cooling infrastructure in the basement, he said.

This is going to be very, very complicated. I think that (design-build) delivery system for this building, as complicated as its going to be, may be something that we should investigate, he said.

Lusker said the committee could end up recommending a design-build approach, but input from McGowan Gordon staff appears to be a logical move.

This is a first step in a seemingly long process, the chairman said. After we get some findings back from the contractor, then maybe we can look at our other options if there are options for the building, which hopefully there will be.

was trying to circumvent legislative oversight.

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House-Senate panel seeking fresh insight into future of Docking - Topeka Capital Journal

Highwoods signs first big tenant for new Cary office building Triangle Business Journal Copernicus, sources confirm, has signed a lease for 44,000 square feet in the five-story, 167,000-square-foot building. Jane Doggett, a broker with Highwoods, says construction is on track for completion in August. Gardner Gibson of Davis Moore Capital ...

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Highwoods signs first big tenant for new Cary office building - Triangle Business Journal