Columbia Property Trust Will Sell Off Remaining Atlanta Assets
The last of Columbia Property Trust's Atlanta holdings are about to be no more.
The Atlanta-based, publicly traded real estate investment trust has its final three metro area assets up for sale: One and Three Glenlake Parkway in Central Perimeter and Lindbergh Center in Buckhead. All three assets are close to going under contract with undisclosed buyers, Columbia CEO Nelson Mills said.
The Glenlake campus is now mainly home to Arby's Restaurant Group's headquarters, which moved there last year. Mills told stock analysts this week that there was broad interest in the Glenlake property from a variety of investors.
“We're pleased with the pricing of the outcome on that one,” he said.
As for Lindbergh — which totals 950K SF of office space connected to MARTA's Lindbergh Station — Columbia's main tenant there, AT&T, is expected to vacate the entire facility in two years, Mills said.
“We've known that for a while,” he said. “That's more of an opportunistic play, a bit thinner pool of potential buyers there. But we feel very good about the buyer we've awarded to and expect that to close."
Despite exiting the Atlanta market, the REIT's headquarters — based at the Proscenium in Midtown — will remain here. But its decision to sell the rest of its Atlanta portfolio has everything to do with the REIT's overall focus and strategy of concentrating on Gateway cities in the U.S., mainly New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., Mills said.
“There's significant supply constraint,” he said. "Doing new developments in these three markets, there are barriers to that."
