Menlo Equities Closes On Echo Street West Purchase

Lincoln Property Co. has officially unloaded its newly developed, but still empty, West Midtown office complex to a California investor. But the firm will remain on to try and lease the property as the Atlanta office market starts to shake off its slump.

Menlo Park, California-based Menlo Equities has closed on the office component of Lincoln’s Echo Street West development for an undisclosed sum.

The purchase includes the 275K SF, five-story, steel-and-timber-framed 765 Echo office building, the two-story, 21K SF 745 Echo creative loft office facility, and the 9K SF restaurant and tenant amenity space at 755 Echo. All of the buildings were completed in the first three months of this year, and none of the office space is occupied.

The price was not reflected in Fulton County property records as of press time. The Atlanta Business Chronicle previously reported the complex was set to trade in the low $200 per SF price, or approximately $60M. That would be a huge discount to its reported development cost of more than $450 per SF.

When JLL began listing the project this summer, the marketing material advertised Echo Street as being offered “at a meaningful discount to replication cost,” which the brokers estimated to be more than $700 per SF.

“Menlo Equities understood our vision for the entire Echo Street West project and believes in the success and expansion of this neighborhood,” Lincoln Executive Vice President Hunter Henritze said in the release. “With so little new development coming to market in Atlanta over the next several years, Echo Street is one of the few remaining new construction opportunities for tech and professional services tenants that want to have an impactful, state-of-the-art office presence in the city.”

Menlo is entering the Atlanta market as a sense of renewed optimism pervades the industry. Companies leased more than 2M SF in the third quarter in Metro Atlanta, a nearly 30% increase from Q3 2023, bringing the year-to-date total leasing activity to 7.2M SF, according to Savills. 

More companies are pushing employees back into the office full-time, and landlords are reporting a rise in demand for space.

Most recently, AT&T announced that its staff will return to the office five days a week beginning next year. Over the past year, the telecommunications giant has been reexpanding its office footprint in Buckhead, taking a combined 205K SF at the Lenox Park office complex, two buildings it previously occupied but gave up just before the pandemic.

Even with these expansions in Atlanta, AT&T Chief Technology Officer Jeremy Legg said the corporation “will not offer one-for-one seating per employee” and will “observe capacity vs. demand and make adjustments” as people come back, Business Insider reported, citing an internal AT&T memo it obtained.

Legg said Atlanta employees would be informed of their timeline to return to the office as construction on additional office space has caused a delay, according to Business Insider.

Menlo Senior Associate Javier Perez told the board of the Development Authority of Fulton County that the firm is in a better position to grab office tenants today than during the buildings' construction, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. The authority, known as Develop Fulton, granted Lincoln $7M in tax breaks over 10 years, an incentive that is transferring to Menlo.

“With new capital, a new bank loan, (Menlo) is well-capitalized to pursue larger tenants,” Perez said during a November Develop Fulton meeting, according to the AJC. “We’re focused on traditional technology and creative tenants that have focused in this area of West Midtown, but we are going to pursue a multipronged leasing strategy.”

The project, near the intersection of Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway and Northside Drive, is directly connected to the Atlanta BeltLine’s Westside Connector trail and has 6.5 acres of green space on its campus.

“This project is precisely what tenants are looking for in today’s market,” Menlo partner Max Sanford said in a statement.