Oklahoma Tower and Leadership Square Sold

[Patrick]

Oliver has done a fine job maintaining his other office properties around town. He's sure turned The Tower around. I only hope he continues this trend with these two fine buildings downtown.
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"Downtown deal reached

By Richard Mize
The Oklahoman

Two of Oklahoma City's largest and most prominent downtown office buildings are changing hands -- from one local investor to another -- in what could be a record real estate acquisition here in decades.
Roy T. Oliver is buying both Leadership Square, 211 N Robinson, and Oklahoma Tower, 210 Park Ave., from Dorchester Capital, whose president is Clayton I. Bennett. Bennett confirmed the deal Friday.

Oliver could not be reached for comment. Bennett said the deal is scheduled to close May 2. He declined to reveal the sales prices.

Talk of the pending sale has swirled downtown for a few weeks. Comments picked up in the past few days when tenants started getting notice that the buildings were being sold.

The two buildings would be the jewels in the already lustrous set of properties Oliver has acquired in recent years.

Oliver, a longtime fixture in the oil-field equipment business, owns or has interests in several prominent office buildings including The Tower, 1601 Northwest Expressway; Corporate Tower, 101 N Robinson Ave.; one of the Waterford Office Complex buildings near NW 63 and Pennsylvania Avenue; One Benham Place, 9400 N Broadway; and Grand Centre, 5400 NW Grand Blvd.

The acquisition of Leadership Square and Oklahoma Tower would give Oliver a half-dozen of Oklahoma City's biggest and most visible office properties since 2000.

Leadership Square, the city's largest skyscraper, has 782,315 square feet and is home to such tenants as Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Grant Thornton, Wachovia Securities and McAfee & Taft. The building, constructed at a cost of $94 million from 1982-1984, has 21 floors in its north tower, 16 in the south tower and a two-level, 340-car parking garage.

LSQ Investors LLC, an affiliate of Dorchester Capital, paid $45 million for Leadership Square in 2000. The value had plummeted with other property values during the 1980s oil bust.

Oklahoma Tower, finished in 1982, has 600,000 square feet and 31 stories. It is home to such tenants as Halliburton Energy Services Inc., Teppco Crude Oil Co. LLC, KPMG LLP, XTO Energy Inc. and Day Edwards Propester & Christensen PC.

Dorchester Capital's OKT Investors LLC paid $30 million for Oklahoma Tower in 1998. It cost a reported $50 million to build.

"We're very proud of the buildings," he said. "I'm very proud of the job we've done with the buildings in terms of stabilizing our tenant mix, increasing occupancy and providing quality customer service to our tenants, and investing in a variety of capital improvement projects that improved the quality and enhanced the tenant experience of the buildings.

"And I'm very proud of who our tenants are and who they represent and that they're doing business in downtown Oklahoma City."

Bennett said he was proud to own the skyscrapers during downtown's renaissance.

"While there are still challenges," he said, "there are economic upsides" to owning property and doing business in the central business district. "We're very proud of the city for what we've all done."

Bennett said he was glad to sell the properties to another local investor.

"We went through a thoughtful process in determining who we wished to negotiate with on the transaction," he said. "We're very pleased that a committed local buyer is completing the deal. He's a quality individual who has a quality company. He will be as committed to the same goals and objectives as we are, in terms of delivering quality customer service."

[Midtowner]

Well, if he does a good job with these properties and really ups the demand for office space downtown, I see very, very good things!

First National could be a great residential complex if they could come up with a decent solution to the parking problem. I think nothing short of adjoining, or at least connected parking will make that work. No one wants to carry their groceries for 2-3 blocks or on a trolley, or anything like that. I don't care how nice the view is, that'd just be a pain in the butt.

They MIGHT have success if they opt for a free valet system, but the overhead there would be pretty cumbersome. I think they'd have a tough time finding tennants.

First National is a very distressed property. I don't know what to do with it. It's such an impressive building though. I'd hate to lose it.

[Patrick]

First National would make an awesome residential complex, especially since it already has a small retail mall on the bottom floors. A huge mistake was made though when the parking garage was sold apart from the building itself. Blame Larry Jones for that one.

You know, if we really want decent conventions and events downtown we need many man more hotel rooms. A hotel/residential mix for First National might be a better possiblity.

As for parking, someone needs to offer the owner of the attached parking garage some money to buy it back. Simple as that.

[renffahcs]

Wow, what a huge plus to have local ownership!! Where to even begin on the positives of this??

[renffahcs]

Quote by Patrick
"You know, if we really want decent conventions and events downtown we need many man more hotel rooms."

The race in Texas right now is to build attached Convention Center Hotels. Houston has their new hotel in place. San Antonio, Austin, and Fort Worth are stepping up to the plate and have approved CC Hotels to be built. Dallas is trying to get the ball rolling but nothing yet. Here in FTW Omni will be building a 600 room hotel with a mix of condos. The hotel will be 15-21 floors depending on how many condos they add. The final proposal should come soon with dirt flying by years end. Many conventions have complained that FTW does not have enough good quality rooms downtown to host larger conventions.

What has brought all this about is the fact that major convention cities like Las Vegas, Orlando, etc have attached CC hotels. As a result we are losing conventions to these other cities for now.

[Patrick]

Sounds like FTW's problem is similar to ours. Fortunately, we have two hotels attached to our convention center buit I'd like to see more. We have some open land to the south o of the Cox Center. At one time, I proposed expanding our convention center south, but we could open that land up to a few hotels to build attached buildings to the south end of the convention center. It's a thought.

The Courtyard Marriot was built across from the Cox Center and Ford Center. I thought it would be attached to one of the facilities by a skybridge, but I guess I was mistaken. I would've liked to have seen the Ford Center and Cox Center connected with a large skybridge!