E Source occupies the building at 1745 38th Street.
Colorado Real Estate Journal
Jill Jamieson-Nichols
Editor
BOULDER--Bancroft Capital’s backup plan for a Boulder property turned out to be a $27.2 million win-win for the company and a local buyer.
Bancroft sold a 155,821-squarefoot portfolio of buildings at 1685 and 1715-1775 38th St. to Boulder-based Conscience Bay Co. The office/flex buildings are 100 percent leased and centrally located in Boulder, providing great cash flow and future redevelopment potential.
“We’re assembling large parcels of land in central Boulder, and this fit into that plan,” said Conscience Bay founder and President Eli Feldman. “It has excellent tenancy right now and is obviously in high demand with 100 percent occupancy, but we also believe it has long-term redevelopment potential,” Feldman said.
Last year, Conscience Bay bought three buildings on 16 acres in Foothills Business Park, also in central Boulder.
Bancroft acquired the 38th Street property – the former Exabyte campus – with the intent of using it to develop a second phase of its Peloton mixed-use condominium project. The recession derailed that idea, and Bancroft Capital instead turned to leasing up the vacant space in cooperation with Dean Callan & Co. brokers Becky Callan Gamble and Hunter Barto.
“We were extremely successful in taking the property from virtually vacant to 100 percent occupancy over the last three years,” said Joe Lamkin, a principal at Bancroft Capital.
The National Ecological Observatory Network Inc., or NEON, occupies 100,000 sf. The property is a “perfect fit” for it in terms of location and functionality, NEON is growing, and it has 10 years remaining on its lease, said Geoff Baukol of CBRE, who represented the seller with CBRE’s Tim Swan.
The National Institute for Trial Advocacy, BiOptix and E Source lease the remaining space.
“It’s very rare to find something of this scale in terms of building size and deal size and acreage, in the heart of Boulder. That’s what drove a lot of activity,” said Baukol. “A lot of investors were looking at this for very strong cash flow, because we have some very strong long-term leases in place, but also as a longer-term play in Boulder, “ said Baukol.
“It’s in the path of progress.” Bancroft Capital recently sold another of its Boulder properties: the 130,847-sf Ball Aerospace campus on Conestoga Street, for $20.5 million. Ball occupied four of the buildings when Bancroft acquired the property, and it leased the fifth during the course of Bancroft’s ownership.
Having accomplished its business plan, “It was time to sell the property, and it performed extremely well for our investors,” Lamkin said.
Bancroft Capital currently owns only one other building in Boulder, but is in discussions on two other assets.
“We are in an acquisition mode. We’re very interested in taking some of the dollars that we pulled out of the last two properties and putting them back into Boulder. We think it’s a great place to invest in real estate,” Lamkin said.