Drawbridge Enters DFW With Office Buy

HQ53

Drawbridge Realty has entered the Dallas-Fort Worth market with the acquisition of HQ53, a newly built office property totaling 248,661 square feet in Plano, Texas. Cawley Partners sold the asset, which is fully leased to Aimbridge Hospitality.

Newmark represented the seller in the transaction, while Forethought Life Insurance Co. facilitated the deal with an $84.9 million acquisition loan, Collin County records show.

The Newmark team heading the disposition included Vice Chairmen Chris Murphy, Gary Carr and Robert Hill as well as Director Chase Tagen. The same brokers facilitated the sale of One Preston Centre, a 77,000-square-foot office building in Dallas’ Preston Hollow submarket in the beginning of the year.

A Class A office building in Plano

Even before Cawley Partners broke ground on HQ53 in 2019, Aimbridge Hospitality agreed to occupy 75,000 square feet of Class A office space for its hotel support teams. A year later, the tenant expanded its lease to encompass the whole building, opting to move its headquarters to HQ53.

The developer financed the construction with a $62 million loan originated by First United Bank and Trust Co., CommercialEdge data shows. Designed by BOKA Powell, the five-story property has 10-foot windows, wood-slatted ceilings, exposed columns and polished concrete floors.

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Completed in 2021 on more than 9 acres at 5301 Headquarters Drive, the office building includes 50,000-square-foot floorplates, a two-story lobby, open-air meeting spaces, a fitness center, a conference facility, a ground-floor patio, bike storage and electric vehicle charging stations. The property also includes a four-story parking structure with a ratio of 5.2 spaces per 1,000 square feet.

HQ53 is some 10 miles northwest of downtown Plano in the Platinum Corridor North submarket. The location is less than 1 mile from the 250,000-square-foot former PepsiCo campus that changed hands in April; the deal marked Rubenstein Partners’ entrance in the city’s office market.

Recently, Doosan Robotics Inc., a South Korean tech company, announced plans of establishing a U.S. presence, opting for 7950 Legacy Drive some 2 miles away. The property will be home to Doosan Robotics Americas, the new business unit of the cobot provider.