News
FOUR SEASONS STRETCH
August 2, 2012
| Harbor East's newest hotel (almost nine months old) is set to grow from 13 stories to 42. (Too bad the US Olympic basketball roster is already set.) |
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| The Four Seasons—host to many Bisnow events, including last week's The Future of Downtown & the Waterfront, where we snappedMcWilliams | Ballard's Ross McWilliams and Chris Masters—will get 30 new residential floors (likely a mix of apartments and condos), plus a penthouse amenity floor. Ross and Chris' Alexandria, Va.-based firm will be marketing the units. The pair comes often to Baltimore anyway. (In town for crabs one day, they figured, "What the hey, why not expand the Four Seasons?") They're also selling condos at The Bush Cos' 414 Water St and have nine left in Mount Vernon's twelve09 North Charles. McWilliams | Ballard also has sold out the Pier Homes at HarborView townhomes across the water from the Four Seasons. |
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| At the event, we also snapped Lexington MKP Management's Bill Mason and panelist Bryce Turner, CEO of Brown Craig Turner Architects. Bill manages Lexington Realty Trust's 100 Light St, now known as Transamerica Tower. Panelists Bob Manekin of Colliers and Kirby Fowler of the Downtown Parnership of Baltimore both sang Bill's praises for the successful releasing of 400k SF there after Lexington built a new parking garage at 30 Light St, renovated the lobby and plaza, and refurbished the elevator and HVAC systems. Lexington closed a $55M mortgage financing with Northwestern Mutual in June, and Bill tells us construction will begin in the fall on Miles & Stockbridge's 115k SF. The building will be 96% occupied once the law firm moves in next spring. |
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| CGA Capital's Kyle Gore worked for Legg Mason Capital Corp back when Transamerica Tower was called Legg Mason Tower (and when everyone walked uphill to school both ways in the snow in mid-July). He met the architect, Vlastimil Koubeck (now deceased) when he worked on another Vlastimil building in Baltimore: the 1,100-car parking garage at 414 Water St (since replaced by the condos McWilliams | Ballard is marketing). Kyle says the granite blocks along the Transamerica Tower windows weren't installed to mask the view of the harbor as we reported earlier this month but rather to mitigate the sun reflecting off the window ledges. HVAC tech wasn't as advanced back then, he says, and there weren't other skyscrapers to provide shade. |
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| Wells REIT II?s Ryan McIver and Jerry Banks came to the Four Seasons for our event from their Atlanta HQ to show support for reinvestment in Downtown and the Inner Harbor. They do, of course, have skin in the game: Their fund owns the T. Rowe Price Building at 100 E Pratt—where Brio Tuscan Grille and Starbucks have taken the last retail spots—as well as 7031 Columbia Gateway Dr(leased to Micros Systems) and the pair of Northrop Grumman buildings known as WestQuest Technology Park in Linthicum. |
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| Someday we'll get all the real estate Manekins in one room for a big family photo, but for now we're happy to provide this father-son pairing for the album: COPT's Jon and Colliers' Bob. |
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| We also snapped JPB Partners' Dick Story and Alvarez & Marsal's Marc Sherman. Dick tells us his firm's private equity portfolio (one of three legs on its stool, along with real estate development/ management and accounting/M&A) includes the Greene Turtle restaurants. Marc just got back from Mexico and Venezuela to help a multinational client with international compliance. He also tells us his firm has been running Lehman Bros since it filed for bankruptcy. |
