Overstock Breaks Ground on Peace Coliseum Corporate Park

Overstock broke ground this week on its new corporate campus, referred to as the "Peace Coliseum," which will look like a corporate glass-and-concrete version of the Roman Coliseum, but from the air, the three-story building will appear as a peace sign. The $100 million project will bring most of its 1,600 employees under one roof on a five-acre parcel of land in Midvale, UT, a suburb of Salt Lake City.

"We need a large space where we can get together as a company and have meetings all in one place or meals," said Overstock President Stormy Simon in a press release. "We currently don't have one in either structure that we're in, the capability to gather as one company. Our company is split and we're on different sides of town, 800 employees in one space and 800 employees in another. To have it created with the function of our company in mind so it works for us and how we see departments interact, it'll be a better work environment. To be at a point where we're doing well as an organization and be able to build a building that's just for us and unite our workforce is so exciting."

The 231,000-square-foot office building will be located at 7295 S. Bingham Junction Blvd. In addition to the central office building, the campus will include an amenities building, park-like open green space and a parking structure, according to a Deseret News article. The developer is Gardner Co., the contractor is Okland Construction and the architect is EDA Architects Inc. The Overstock warehouses will remain in their present locations in Utah, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.

KBS REIT III Buys Salt Lake Tower for $170.5M

KBS Real Estate Investment Trust III, a public non-traded REIT, announced this week that it had purchased 222 Main in Salt Lake City's Central Business District for $170.5 million plus closing costs, making it a record-setting deal for commercial real estate in Salt Lake City, on a cost per-square footage basis. The 426,657-square foot tower was sold by a joint venture of Bentall Kennedy, Hamilton Partners and Honeywell Retirees Pension. Marc Renard of Cushman & Wakefield, Kip Paul of Cushman & Wakefield | Commerce, and Tim Richey and Michael Winn of Cushman & Wakefield of Colorado coordinated the sale on behalf of the selling venture. The property was 85% leased at the time of sale.

"We believe 222 Main was designed to the highest standards with first-class finishes throughout which, along with its location in Salt Lake City's CBD, makes it a premier office property," said KBS Capital Advisors Senior VP Tim Helgeson. "This is an asset that benefits from unobstructed views of the Wasatch Range. Additionally, downtown Salt Lake City is just two blocks from the $2 billion City Creek Center mixed use development, which features numerous first-class amenities."

Designed by the international architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the 22-story tower at 222 Main was built in 2009 by Okland Construction and was the first Utah building to be LEED Gold certified. The sale drew national interest and multiple bids from local and out-of-state investors, according to one of a team of real estate brokers at Cushman & Wakefield | Commerce offices in Salt Lake, Denver and Los Angeles who were involved in the sale. "We had huge traffic on this," said Kip Paul, the firm's director of investment sales in Salt Lake. "I can't tell you how many people flew in to see this."

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.