The one-story brick building dates back to 1947. (Mike Platania photo)
The Scott’s Addition office market is closing out a busy summer with another deal.
Earlier this month, the 11,000-square-foot office building at 3435 W. Leigh St. sold for $2.25 million. The new owner is an entity tied to Continental Underwriters, which has been a tenant in the building since it was redeveloped in 2016 by a group led by local investors Charles Bice and Birck Turnbull.
The property near the corner of Leigh and Belleville streets was part of a three-building assemblage the group bought in 2016 for $3.5 million.
They renovated the buildings into modern office space and set out to lease them. Bice said Continental Underwriters’ lease included a purchase option.
“It was your typical Scott’s Addition historic warehouse that was pretty threadbare. These buildings had not had much investment for a very long time, so we did a historic tax credit renovation and brought it up to standards for Class A office,” Bice said.
“Part of the equation that made us able to attract tenants included putting a purchase option into the lease at the end of five years. We just hit that five-year mark and that tenant took us up on that option.”
Calls and emails to Continental Underwriters went unreturned. Per its website, the company specializes in insuring businesses in the forestry and timber industries. It was founded 11 years ago. The Scott’s Addition office serves as its headquarters.
The sale closed Aug. 9. The city most recently assessed the building and its 0.3-acre parcel at $2.6 million.
Continental Underwriters shares the building with Gilbane Building Co., the general contracting firm that was recently selected to build the Flying Squirrels’ new ballpark. Gilbane will continue to operate out of the Leigh Street building, a company spokesperson said.
Bice and Turnbull’s group continues to own a handful of other properties in Scott’s Addition, including both of The Veil Brewing Co.’s taprooms, Kismet Modern Indian’s building at 2918 W. Broad St. and the former Isley Brewing Co. space at 1715 Summit Ave. Bice said the Isley space was recently leased to an unnamed office user.
Bice said this latest sale was an unusual one for his group.
“We don’t sell very often. This is the first Scott’s Addition property that we’ve sold,” Bice said. “We’re really buy-and-hold investors. We’ll be happy to continue owning the assets we do in Scott’s Addition.”
Another building that was part of Bice and Turnbull’s 2016 deal is 1408 Roseneath Road. The 10,000-square-foot space came available last year when ad firm Yebo ceased operations after decades in business, and earlier this summer was leased by Apogem Capital, a financial firm that’s relocating its headquarters there from downtown.
This summer also saw another office space in the neighborhood get leased: 3410 W. Leigh St., which is now the local nerve center for real estate brokerage Newmark.
Seems like options to buy are a bit of a dangerous lease term in Scott’s Addition, I recall seeing this before here.