A bankrupt Houston real estate investment trust has a unique buyer for one of its properties.
Hartman SPE, a division of Houston's Silver Star Properties REIT, is selling office and retail buildings to focus on self-storage investments.
Hartman received an offer to sell the 10-story North Central Plaza I office tower on Route 75 to the Costco next door to the building.
Costco agreed to pay $14.25 million for the approximately 200,000-square-foot high-rise built in 1982, according to bankruptcy court filings. The building sits on approximately 4 acres on the west side of US 75, just south of the LBJ Freeway.
Costco built the store on about 14 acres south of the tower in 2017, according to county tax records. The discount store has a total area of 152,000 square feet.
Costco has made the highest offer for the North Central Plaza office tower on US 75.
“I believe it is unlikely that the debtors will receive a higher or better offer,” Hartman SPE President David Wheeler said in a bankruptcy court filing seeking approval for the sale. He said the purchase and sale agreement was the best offer available at this time under current market conditions.
CBRE Group sold the building.
According to a report by real estate data firm Coster Group, real estate brokers speculate that Costco may demolish the office tower to expand its footprint or use the building for other office uses. There is.
Costco officials did not respond to requests for information about plans for the building.
In the Dallas area, Hartman Real Estate Investment Trust owned 10 office buildings and three shopping centers as of early 2023. The company recently sold one of its shopping centers in North Texas.
Hartman filed for bankruptcy protection with more than $200 million in debt following a legal dispute with real estate investment company founder Allen Hartman.
“With this filing, Hartman SPE has fully paid all undisputed creditors, completed the refinancing of its maturing senior debt, and maximized the capital available for redeployment into the Silver Star self-storage asset class. “This will enable us to carry out an orderly sale of assets in order to Until the bankruptcy announcement.
This summer, Silver Star notified investors that its operations were under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
As of the beginning of this year, Silver Star owned 44 commercial properties totaling approximately 7 million square feet in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.
In addition to North Central Plaza, Hartman has the Gateway Tower on the North Central Expressway in North Dallas, the Three Forest Plaza office tower near Forest Lane in Dallas, the Skylark Tower in Arlington, It owns Richardson Heights and Promenade North Shopping Center in Richardson.
The bankruptcy court approved Hartman's sale of Gateway Tower, located at 8111 LBJ Freeway, to Hamilton Commercial LLC for $14.1 million. His 15-story high-rise building at the northwest corner of LBJ and US 75 was built in 1982 and is 266,000 square feet.
Hartman sold Plano's Prestonwood Park Shopping Center in October.
