Everyone wants a piece of Uptown Dallas, including Cousins Properties.
The Atlanta-based office real estate trust purchased the mortgage for Saint Ann Court, an Uptown Dallas office building at 2501 North Harwood. It bought the loan for $138 million, according to a recent SEC filing.
Cousins paid for it with cash and a $58.5 million draw on its credit facility. Cousins purchased the mortgage from New York-based investor KKR Real Estate, according to deed records.
The property was developed by Dallas-based Harwood International and is still owned by the developer.
The 25-story Saint Ann Court spans 320,000 square feet, putting the debt at $431 per square foot. It was built in 2009 and designed by Los Angeles-based Shimoda Design Group.
The building is about a quarter-mile from the Crescent, the 1.3 million-square-foot luxury mixed-use development that anchors Uptown.
Dallas’ Uptown neighborhood has been the aspirational office location for Dallasites for more than a decade, since Klyde Warren Park opened in 2012 over Woodall Rodgers Freeway to connect Uptown and downtown.
In Dallas’ version of the “flight to quality” office trend, companies with downtown digs have been ditching their aging offices for flashy Uptown towers.
It’s an even hotter investment opportunity now that some of the world’s largest banks are planting flags in the popular neighborhood adjacent to downtown Dallas.
“Y’all Street,” Texas’ answer to Wall Street, is taking shape in Uptown with the development of NorthEnd, a Hunt Realty project that will include a $500 million campus for Goldman Sachs, and Parkside Uptown, a Pacific Elm building that will house Bank of America.
Cousins Properties focuses on Sun Belt markets and owns two properties in Dallas, according to its website. It owns 5950 Sherry Lane, a 197,000-square-foot office building in Preston Center, and Legacy Union, a 319,000-square-foot office building in Plano.