FL company buys three suburban offices in $1.1B deal

Three suburban Chicago office buildings were part of the $1.1 billion deal struck last week by Florida’s Workspace Property and Singapore’s GIC.

Thomas Rizk and Roger Thomas, founders of Boca Raton, Fla.-based Workspace said they acquired about 8 million square feet of Class A office space across 53 buildings from Griffin Realty Trust, the Chicago Business Journal reported. The deal included a total of 41 properties and was concentrated around Atlanta, Dallas and San Francisco.

Workspace said it’s doubling down on suburban offices, where U.S. vacancies fell below downtown counterparts in the second quarter for the first time in decades. The rate reached 16.8 percent in the suburbs, compared with 17 percent downtown, according to CBRE.

The Chicago properties were a 176,000-square-foot single-unit one at 1501 North Division Street in Plainfield; a 206,000-square-foot one at 2200-2222 Kensington Court in Oak Brook; and a 176,000-square-foot multi-unit one at 4 Parkway North Boulevard in Deerfield. The prices weren’t disclosed.

The Oak Brook property is the U.S. headquarters for Ace Hardware, which is planning to move to the site of the former McDonald’s headquarters in The Reserve. More than 1,000 Ace employees will move into that office next year.

According to Workspace, more than 66 percent of total U.S. commercial office inventory is in the suburbs. The $1.1 billion purchase brings Workspace Property’s footprint up to 18 million square feet across 200 buildings in 22 major U.S. markets.

“More and more Fortune 1000 corporations are rethinking their presence in downtown markets and relocating,” Thomas said in a statement.

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