Chicago firm closes on $120M acquisition of Precedent park

Chicago-based LaSalle Investment Management has closed on its $120 million purchase of the 21-building Precedent Office Park on the city’s northeast side and has handed leasing duties to the local office of Jones Lang LaSalle.

LaSalle Investment Management is an independent subsidiary of real estate brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle, which announced its appointment Wednesday as leasing agent for the 1.2 million-square-foot complex.

“For a major, international investment management firm like LaSalle to invest in Indianapolis is a huge vote of confidence on the great momentum we’ve seen in the local economy,” Jones Lang LaSalle Managing Director John Robinson said in a prepared statement.

IBJ reported in May that LaSalle was set to pay about $100 a square foot, or a total of around $100 million—far shy of the $143 million that Cayman Islands-based Global Property Investment Fund shelled out in 2005. LaSalle Investment Management also bought two buildings within The Precedent not owned by Global Property but by St. Louis-based Pace Properties.

Real estate sources confirmed to IBJ on Thursday that LaSalle paid $20 million for those two buildings, and that its total investment in the office park was roughly $120 million.

The transactions closed earlier in July, Jones Lang LaSalle said in the press release.

The Precedent is located in the Keystone office submarket and is comprised of a mix of mid-rise, two-story and single-story office buildings. The complex is 94-percent occupied by tenants including Zurich Insurance Group, Rockwell Automation, Honeywell, WebMD, Defender Direct and Stonegate Mortgage Corp. It is the second-largest office park in the Indianapolis area behind only Park 100 on the northwest side.

The Precedent became available following a bitter legal dispute between Global Property, which owned it, and locally based HDG Mansur, which served as the group’s adviser when it bought the park.

Robinson and Jones Lang LaSalle colleague Tammy Recker are the park’s new leasing agents, assuming those duties from CBRE.

Jones Lang LaSalle also leases the Keystone at the Crossing office complex, as well as Woodfield Crossing II and Woodfield Crossing III on the west side of North Keystone Avenue. Overall, the company leases a portfolio of 38 office properties in the Indianapolis area totaling 6.5 million square feet.

LaSalle Investment Management has 700 employees in 16 countries managing an asset portfolio topping $47 billion, according to its website.