Younan Taps GVA Cawley for 1.4M SF Asset

DALLAS-Younan Properties Inc. has selected GVA Cawley’s leasing team to fill the 1.4-million-square-foot Thanksgiving Tower. GVA Cawley takes the assignment from Stream Realty Partners LP, which handled leasing for the class A downtown office building long before Younan Properties acquired the asset in 2007.

Younan Properties’ vice president of asset management John Cook tells GlobeSt.com that the reason for the change had nothing to do with Stream Realty and everything to do with getting a different perspective. “Stream had been on the building for a long time, and we felt it was time to change hands and bring a new look to the leasing effort,” Cook explains. “The GVA team has strong CBD experience. They’ve already been able to identify a number of opportunities worth pursuing, some sizeable, some much smaller.”

Los Angeles-based Younan Properties acquired the 50-story asset at 1601 Elm St. in February 2007. These days, occupancy sits at 55%. During the past couple of years, long-time tenant Tower Club renewed its 28,512-square-foot space, and received a $3 million renovation for doing so. In addition, Capital Institutional Services Inc. leased just under 28,000 square feet last August.

Now the local GVA Cawley’s challenge will be to lease up more than 450,000 square feet of contiguous space in the 27-year-old building. John Conger, GVA Cawley principal is confident it can get done, pointing out the company’s seasoned leasing team has been through down cycles in the past. “We’ll find the tenants. Searching out the big deals working in the marketplace is a big priority,” he says. “We have a big space.”

On the other end of the spectrum are just-completed speculative suites geared to accommodate tenants requiring anywhere from 1,800 square feet to 6,000 square feet. In addition to offering a variety of options to a variety of tenants, GVA Cawley senior managing director Malcolm Ross says the asking rates are competitive.

“If you’re on Ross Avenue, paying in the low-to-high $20s per square foot, you can go a few blocks south and get space for the mid-to-high teens,” he comments. The quoted lease rate for space at Thanksgiving Tower is $17-$18 per square foot, plus electricity. Others working with Thanksgiving Tower are GVA Cawley director Mike Pierre and Stephanie Richardson, the company’s leasing representative.

Cook says that, for the time being, there are no plans to change leasing teams on any of the other Dallas building in Younan Properties’ portfolio. “We’re constantly evaluating our leasing efforts and teams,” he adds. “Right now, there are no plans to change, but that’s always under scrutiny and evaluation.”