Mega-deal for mega-mart
Iconic Dallas building's $800 million purchase among biggest office deals of 2018
Big D scored a really big deal last year in the market for office properties — so big, in fact, that it was the third-largest office deal of 2018 outside Manhattan.
Last year’s $800 million purchase by data center operator Equinix of the iconic 1.6 million-square-foot Infomart Dallas not only ranked as the third-largest office deal outside Manhattan, but as the sixth-largest office deal in the U.S. and the largest office deal in Texas, according to Commercial Café.
The seller was an affiliate of ASB Capital Management, which had owned the building since 2015. Equinix had been the largest tenant of the seven-story building, which is on North Stemmons Freeway.
Infomart Dallas, a data center and office complex featuring a glass-and-steel exterior, generated revenue of about $50 million in 2017; it’s one of the country’s largest hubs for data traffic and a communications gateway to Latin America.
The structure, which opened in 1985 on the site of P.C. Cobb Stadium, is one of the largest buildings in Dallas. It was famously patterned after London’s 19th-century Crystal Palace, the site of the first World’s Fair.
Trammell Crow developed Infomart Dallas and subsequently bought, and later sold, a majority stake in the building. As recently as 2017 — before Equinix bought the building — a $500 million, 500 million-square-foot expansion was being mulled.
The only other Texas property to make Commercial Café’s list of the top 50 office deals of 2018 was the $405 million purchase of Houston’s Memorial Hermann Medical Plaza by an affiliate of LaSalle Investment Management. The seller of the 28-story, 510,000-square-foot building was a partnership comprising Mischer Healthcare, Memorial Hermann Health System, and other private investors.
