Hertz Financial Center purchased
New owner has big plans for former Hertz Financial Center
The Journal Record
December 21, 2007
OKLAHOMA CITY – Jade Noles has big plans for the former Hertz Financial Center building in northwest Oklahoma City. Noles is the president of Caliber Development Co., which purchased the Class A office building at 3817 NW Expressway for an undisclosed price this week.
The 10-story building with a mirrored glass exterior was built in 1979. Hertz Realty Corp. purchased the building in 1994 and recently decided to sell the property after moving its operations to the companies other Oklahoma City buildings.
Mark Beffort, with Grubb & Ellis Levy Beffort, was the broker for the deal and said seven potential buyers lined up, but Hertz chose Caliber as the best potential buyer. “Caliber is going to be a great owner,” Beffort said. “They have begun to make a significant commitment to real estate within the state of Oklahoma.”
Caliber, a company owned by Connecticut-based private equity firm Wexford Capital, has made its mark in Oklahoma City and Tulsa primarily in residential development. The company recently completed two 45,000 square-foot office buildings at the Quail Springs Corporate Park and own and lease both buildings. With the purchase of the Hertz building the company made its first foray into purchasing income producing assets. The building has 268,800 square feet of rentable space and Noles said the building is at about 50 percent occupancy. In addition to renovations and capital improvements planned for the lobby and common areas, Noles said the building is being renamed the Caliber Center. “We certainly want to make some improvements to the building,” he said. Caliber has hired Price Edwards and Co. to handle management and marketing for the building.
Noles said the purchase will allow Caliber to offer coveted Class A office space along Northwest Expressway.“The suburban market it’s in is a great market but it’s certainly limited in Class A space,” Noles said. “We have an opportunity now to add large blocks of A space in a market that really doesn’t have much of that available.”
To stress how tight the market is, Beffort added that vacancy for Class A space in the Oklahoma City market as a whole is about seven percent, much of which is now in the Hertz building.
And while Caliber has jumped into the office market they are by no means stepping out of the housing development business. Two of the company’s current projects are The Grove, a 640-acre master planned community in northwest Oklahoma City and the 1,340 acre Woodland Park, a mixed-use master planned community in east Edmond.
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