620 W. California

[Pete]

Building permit application today to convert existing 14,000 square foot warehouse into offices. Amount not stated on the app.

Looks like the Film Row magic is starting to spill over to California.

2/6/14: Building permit application
County Assessor Record

[Pete]

I had written about this elsewhere but The Ross Group, which occupies 620 W. California for their construction company, systematically acquired the entire block bounded by California, Reno, Dewey and Lee and is now looking to sell it all.

I spoke with them as they were starting to acquire the various properties over the last several years, and was told their long-term plan was to level the entire block and do commercial on the first 1 or 2 floors then parking above.

This is also the same group that bought Villa Teresa before recently selling to Marva Ellard and her partners.

They still occupy the one office building but the for sale listing said they would be willing to relocate or lease back the space. Looks like their once ambitious plans to do development projects in OKC are completely off now. They have done several things in Tulsa, which is their HQ.

Asking $8 million for the 3.1 acres and they spent about $6.7 million in total.

[Urbanized]

We visited their office as part of a ULI trip a few months ago. They are in love with San Antonio right now, and basically said that it’s roughly the same travel time via air to SA as it is to OKC via auto. Therefore, they saw it essentially as a choice between the two cities, and due to SA’s currently pretty remarkable economic and population growth it was a no-brainer for them.

Another fascinating tidbit was the source of their capital, which is heavily from foreign investors, especially in China. One of the things they mentioned was that for many wealthy Chinese investors, putting cash into American real estate is an entry fee for getting their children American educations. Apparently there is an immigration loophole which enables children of foreign investors above a certain level - I think it was only about $100K - to breeze through the application process for education visas and essentially be treated as U.S. citizens. They said many of these investors don’t even really know or care where OKC or Tulsa are; they’re just looking for resident-status education for their kids and a decent return on their investment.

[Pete]

The property directly east of here -- the old Peacock restaurant and lots -- is for sale as well.

That's two almost full blocks available just as downtown spreads west.

However, these are people looking to sell rather than develop, therefore the next buyer is going to have a lot more money in the property making it harder to get things financed and cash-flowing.


It's amazing we still have a bunch of huge holes in our urban core. This, despite an incredible amount of development in the last 10 years.

[bradh]

Ross Group also does a ton of work in the federal//military sector, and I'd say San Antonio has much bigger market for them in that regard (in before someone reminds me how big Tinker and FAA and Ft Sill are...I know).

[Paseofreak]

A huge portion of DoD construction and environmental work is contract out of San Antonio Any major player at Tinker has visited SA and it's a great place to have an office when marketing DoD for that kind of work.