written by
Natalie Baylon

Intersection Investment Management Acquires Industrial / Flex property in Gilbert, Arizona

Intersection Investment Management is pleased to announce it has acquired a 92,750 square foot multi-tenant flex industrial property in Gilbert, Arizona. Representing brokers, David Bean and Cory Sposi of Commercial Properties Inc., completed this off-market deal bringing the second acquisition in Intersection’s post-pandemic industrial investment strategy. The strategy focuses on $5-$20M projects in markets west of Denver based on post-covid market trend forecasting. The investment was syndicated to a group of Intersection’s high net worth investors. It is the company’s 8th acquisition in total and the fund now has surpassed over $100M in historical deal transaction volume. Anton Myskiw, Intersection Senior Analyst and Phoenix native who sourced the deal says,

“Given the competitive nature of the market for this kind of product, we have to recognize the great work done by our brokerage team at Commercial Properties. They have worked collaboratively with us for months in the Phoenix Metro area and helped us find a great deal off market.”

The Sellers, Golden Key Industrial Park LLC. who previously held and managed the property as private investors, focused upon occupancy rather than driving rental rates. This resulted in an opportunity to hold rents at market while completing significant improvements at the property. This will allow Intersection to focus on tenant experience and make improvements that will improve curb appeal and value-add. Planned renovations include new paint, parking lot resurfacing, landscape upgrades, and, new tenant signage to provide greater visibility. Rocco Cortese, Managing Director with Intersection confirms,

“Multi-tenant flex with a value-add component represents a very good risk profile for our investors. The Southeast Phoenix market has great fundamentals and we can see a clear path to demand for high quality product like KeyWest Plaza. Fundamentally, that is what we set out to do on every deal”

Intersection envisions and intends to create a best-in-class flex industrial asset to meet the demands of the accelerated growth in the Gilbert market. Commercial Properties LLC. will continue to manage and lease the property on behalf of Intersection. David Bean, who represented the seller as broker for Commercial Properties, Inc. notes,

“Intersection is relatively new to this market, but quickly understood where the growth opportunities could be found. We look forward to working with them as they execute the strategy on this property.”

To learn more about this deal please reach out to Rocco Cortese at [email protected] or Anton Myskiw at [email protected]

Autumn Valencia is the Marketing Coordinator at Intersection, providing strategic marketing expertise to support business objectives across company divisions. For general and marketing inquiries, please contact Autumn at [email protected] 

written by
Natalie Baylon

Intersection is pleased to announce the sale of a fully leased and stabilized internal investment fund property managed by Intersection

Experiential Poway Retail Center Closes for $13.5 M

Senior Directors, Kyle Clark, and Dan McCarthy along with Senior Associate Alec Spencer, represented the seller in the sale of the North County retail center, Old Poway Village at 14005-14055 Midland Road, Poway CA. The 35,191 square-foot award-winning center consists of a selection of carefully curated retail tenants.

The property was sold as a fully leased and stabilized investment. After acquiring the property in 2017, Intersection established a new vision for the center that focused on building a destination lifestyle center for the Poway Community. To accomplish this, Intersection replaced several non-performing tenants with new, carefully curated businesses to create a retail experience conducive to the family neighborhood of Poway and surrounding North County residents.

Artisan Food and Beverage tenants The Hop Stop, Smokin’ J’s, and Mission Cellars anchor the center, and they are complemented with users such as the Bark and Collar, Poway Music Academy, Poway Pilates, and a lineup of other local tenants that support a unique dining and shopping experience.

“This has been a true passion play for Intersection.” Said Mark Hoekstra, Managing Director of Intersection. “I grew up in this neighborhood and always felt that this center could become something special. It has been an amazing journey seeing this property transform”.

The property was sold to a 1031 Exchange Buyer who closed within 45 days of opening escrow. “We positioned this asset to sell with clean triple net leases, good lease term on the rent roll, and have maintained the property impeccably.”, shared broker Kyle Clark “The Escrow was smooth with no surprises.”

The buyer plans to hold the asset long-term drawing upon the stabilized cash flow. “This property performed very well during the pandemic.” Stated broker Dan McCarthy. “Our tenant base was resilient, and the many outdoor areas benefited our food and beverage tenants significantly.”

To learn more about this deal please reach out to Kyle Clark at [email protected] or Dan McCarthy at [email protected]

Autumn Valencia is the Marketing Coordinator at Intersection, providing strategic marketing expertise to support business objectives across company divisions. For general and marketing inquiries, please contact Autumn at [email protected] 

written by
Natalie Baylon

Freestanding industrial building closes for $7,515,500 in Carlsbad 

Intersection Senior Director, Henry Zahner represented the seller in the sale of the North County freestanding industrial building for $7,515,000. The 42,260 square-foot property consists of vast warehouse space that has been immaculately kept.

The facility was previously occupied by Newport Blue, Skivia Graphics, and other top manufacturers. Today, the facility located at 2258 Rutherford Rd. in Carlsbad CA, is the future home to the new owner-user who has business interests that will occupy the facility and compliment the surrounding area.

The property’s location within the Carlsbad Research Center in coastal North County is a current ‘hot market’ for Biotech and Life Science sectors where many competing properties have been snapped up in recent months. Both the seller and buyer couldn’t have been happier with the outcome with both a competitive price point and an easy close.

For more information on this deal or if you would like to discuss Intersection representation further, please reach out to Henry Zahner at 760-889-7943 or [email protected].

Autumn Valencia is the Marketing Coordinator at Intersection, providing strategic marketing expertise to support business objectives across company divisions. For general and marketing inquiries, please contact Autumn at [email protected] 

written by
Natalie Baylon

A Detailed look into general partner investing and navigating a deal through a pandemic

Throughout my years raising capital for our real estate investments, I have encountered a few investors who ask how they can be the General Partner instead of the Limited Partner in a deal. The first thing that would come to mind when I heard those questions is: Invest thousands of hours in learning a complex industry, and hundreds of thousands of dollars into people and technology, and you will be just getting started. Putting together a successful commercial real estate deal is not for the faint at heart or the inexperienced. It takes years of hard-work, talented people and you have to actually find the right deal in a very competitive market. That said, Ingenuity, Collaboration, and Stewardship are core values of our firm so we always tried to find a way to give our investors a taste of the General Partner “like” returns by targeting value add properties with higher return scenarios.

 

During the Pandemic, we were raising our second Fund and in March of this year (2020) we purchased an office property. Bad timing? Not really. We still love the deal and our basis, and in fact, feel very bullish about the long-term opportunity to generate a strong return for our investors. The structure in that deal, however, was a little different. We had a joint venture partner in that property, and our Fund was acting as the General Partner. All of the returns from the Joint Venture, including carried interests that we would be able to earn in excess of the property level returns, were set up to inure to the Fund. This structure effectively put all of the Fund investors in the role of General Partner. Normally, this scenario is structured a little differently with investors only earning a percentage of the carried interest. However, because we were using Fund equity as the General Partner capital, we felt that sending 100% of the carried interest to investors was the right thing to do. Considering the risk that the Pandemic has thrown into the market, we’re happy to have that structure in place and are optimistic that the returns will ultimately play out in a significantly positive way for our Fund.

As we approached the structure of our last deal, we started to consider the concept in a more meaningful way for future deals. Our research returned that the GP Co-Investment structure seemed very appealing for us as we continued to build our investment practice. We had just built out a new strategy for acquiring logistics based industrial in markets west of Denver and realized that we could lever our personal capital more effectively if we brought in GP-Co Investors in multiple deals. They would have the opportunity to earn a 10% piece of our carried interest effectively allowing the individual investor to earn greater returns than our institutional limited partners when measured against project-level returns.

Sometimes unexpected situations create opportunity. Not only did we develop a new and exciting investment strategy, but we were also able to create an investment structure that helped us address the requests of those who wanted to be General Partner in some of our deals. The thousands of hours, and hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in people and technology, along with a little entrepreneurship, helped us put our private investors one step ahead. We’ll still do all of the heavy lifting of course and continue to focus on enriching the lives of those we serve (whether they be GP’s or LP’s)!

Autumn Valencia is the Marketing Coordinator at Intersection, providing strategic marketing expertise to support business objectives across company divisions. For general and marketing inquiries, please contact Autumn at [email protected] 

written by
Natalie Baylon

Intersection is proud to announce its new offering, R&M Services

 

An Essential part of Intersection’s real estate platform in providing a vertically integrated operation is the Repair and Maintenance (R&M) Services division. The R&M Services division offers facilities solutions beyond the ordinary. Delivering an array of services to Intersection’s portfolio of properties, in addition to servicing the greater San Diego area. 

The division ensures that tenant satisfaction, asset preservation, safety, and curb appeal are top priorities. Intersection’s R&M technicians collaborate with property managers, brokers, and owners alike to gain a better understanding of the client’s assets. Consequently, this relationship management leads to increased efficiency and reduced risk.

Intersection R&M technicians are exemplary of the company’s core values and always Driven by Integrity. The team maintains the highest level of professionalism and takes pride in the properties they service. 

Offerings range from more specialty services like flooring, lighting, and concrete treatment to turnover repair for vacant units including patching, painting, window treatment install. R&M Services also has the ability to operate for recurring services like gardening, inspection, vandalism repair, and day porter services. 

At Intersection, we look forward to being able to offer more solutions and expand these services to the relationships we are so proud to have built. 

 

For more information regarding repair and maintenance services with Intersection, please contact Elaine Wolgast at 619.314.7200

written by
Natalie Baylon

COVID-19: Redefining Our Why

At Intersection, we play dual roles as Property Manager and Asset Manager for the portfolio of properties we manage. Our funds own four properties and we have a very important role as stewards for our investors. However, we also have an equally important role as service provider to our third-party clients. Whether an owner or a manager, COVID-19 has challenged us in ways we could not have imagined.

Back in February, when COVID-19 was peaking in China, we realized that we needed to be prepared for the eventuality that it would find its way to the United States. So, we began the process of evaluating and creating an emergency plan should our people need to work from home. Fortunately, we became a paperless company three-years ago, and have been supplying each of our employees with laptop computers since their onboarding. With this, Intersection was already equipped to make the transition from working in office to working remote. Three weeks from that initial discussion with COVID-19 cases multiplying rapidly, we offered our entire work force voluntary work from home status. Another week later, on March 19th, California mandated shelter in place and only essential businesses could remain open. Other than a core team of people, our entire work force was working remotely. Things can happen fast, but usually not this fast!

It is now April 13th, and we are in a different world from where we were in February. I joke that each day feels like a dog year because so much changes in 24 hours. Our team is working almost seamlessly from home, and our owned and managed properties are operating efficiently. The effort we put into our planning, technology, and in the quality of the people in our organization allowed us to adapt this incredible change.

The story does not end there. In the past few weeks the real work has begun as we deal with several tenants whose businesses have been literally shut down. How can you pay the mortgage and operating expenses when your property depends on rent from businesses that have been forced to close? Even though we were getting our jobs done each day, we had to figure out ways to help our clients and investors maintain  the value of their investments.

We were equally concerned about our own business. Intersection is a small business and a crisis like this one would certainly impact us as well. As such, we closely monitored stimulus activities instituted by the Federal Government. The $2.3 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security act (CARES) includes $349 billion in forgivable loans for small businesses to support payroll, rent and cover certain utility expenses. This is the Payroll Protection Provision (PPP) of the act that is focused upon supporting small businesses. This program would be a key element of our company’s plan to retain people and address major corporate expenses over the next few months.

However, the process of applying for PPP was not simple.  I am so grateful that we have the systems and team to compile the information needed for our lender as we prepared our application.  Through our own application for PPP, we realized that less sophisticated tenants could find the application process challenging. We learned that it is also important to have a banking relationship that has the ability to do SBA loans in order to participate. Many of our tenants who have been shut down did not have these banking relationships nor the resources to get the help they needed. Our unique insight as a small business inspired the empathy to help. Furthermore, we knew our experience could make a difference.

Our team mobilized quickly and put together a COVID-19 Tenant Resource Guide which lists all resources available to our small business tenants (Disaster Relief Direct from the SBA in addition to CARES PPP and other local resources). The two-page package is both simple and useful, and our efforts have not ended there. We have dedicated a team to become experts on CARES PPP and have built a proprietary list of banking relationships that are ready to help.  Although April has been a tough month, we have actually collected more rent than expected. But with so many of our tenants closed for business, we know that May is going to be our most difficult month.  Our CARES team has already put a number of our tenants in touch with SBA lenders and hopefully many of them will get inexpensive, forgivable financing to keep their businesses alive while paying rent, and retaining valuable employees.

It is really difficult to understand what the world will look like when we start to get back to work and social gatherings are allowed again. We can’t control when that will happen, but we can control what we do each day to enhance the lives of those we serve. COVID-19 and the social distancing measures taken to defeat it will never be forgotten. At Intersection, we will remember this point in time when being a small business was a competitive advantage. Our passion for the small businesses that make up our portfolio runs deep and the impact of our values as we support our tenants will be a proud moment in our company’s history. When it is all over and we are in our new normal, our values won’t have changed and the measures we have taken will be remembered. Hopefully, the relationships we care so very much about will be even stronger.

Stay healthy.

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