Last year’s $45.45 million sale of the mixed-use West Glen Town Center in West Des Moines, Iowa, was years in the making.
What began as an unsolicited offer for the project’s 98,000-square-foot office building evolved and expanded through years of stabilizing the mix of tenants, a slowdown in deals because of COVID-19 and other challenges ended with the area’s record sale price for a mixed-use development.
For that, the deal emerged as a CoStar Impact Award winner, as judged by real estate professionals familiar with the market.
Completing the deal involved underwriting the project despite pandemic-related uncertainty about the rent roll, bringing in a new investor, blending the buildings’ varying capitalization rates to identify a total sale price and addressing structural problems within a parking garage.
About the project: The 417,000-square-foot property includes seven office and retail buildings, 154 apartments spread across three buildings, the parking garage and three lots entitled for development. At the time of the sale, the rent roll included more than 25 commercial tenants. The seller was Omaha, Nebraska-based Metonic Real Estate Solutions. The buyer was Brookfield, Wisconsin-based MLG Capital.
What the judges said: West Glen is an “ever-changing investment which will require community involvement, leasing to new tenants and improving the center,” wrote judge Darcy Gill, vice president of sales, leasing and marketing at Denny Elwell Company.
They made it happen: The seller was represented by Ferguson Commercial broker Michael Schindler. The buyer was represented by JLL brokers Justin Lossner, Michael Minard and Marcus Pitts, and Morton Commercial Real Estate broker Shannon Morton.