St. John Properties Acquires Baltimore-Area Office Campus

Aviation Business Park. Image courtesy of St. John Properties Inc.

St. John Properties Inc. has purchased Aviation Business Park, a three-building portfolio in Glen Burnie, Md., comprising more than 120,000 square feet of office space. Cushman & Wakefield brokered the transaction on behalf of the seller, Adler Real Estate Partners, while the buyer handled the acquisition in-house.

According to Anne Arundel County public records, the portfolio traded for $13.3 million. As revealed by the same source, the properties previously changed hands in 2017 for $16.4 million. The asset was 63 percent leased at the time of the current transaction.

This acquisition is the second major one closed by St. John Properties in recent months, following the purchase of the 74,000-square-foot Triangle Business Park, which is now part of the company’s Baltimore Gateway.

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Originally completed in 2008, Aviation Business Park houses a diverse range of tenants, including Skyline Technology Solutions, Atlantic Yacht Documentation and CDI Corp., among others, according to CommercialEdge. The office campus offers connectivity to Interstate 97, being less than 4 miles from the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. The property is also situated in proximity to a range of business-related amenities, hotels, shopping centers and restaurants.

Improvement plans ahead

The single-story buildings are located adjacent to St. John’s Cromwell Business Park. These buildings are 6956, 6958 and 6960 Aviation Blvd., comprising 54,310 square feet, 35,361 square feet, and 30,613 square feet of office space, respectively. The portfolio is part of a larger, mixed-use business community with a total of nearly 1 million square feet of flex, research and development, office, and retail space.

St. John Properties intends to reposition one of the buildings at Aviation Business Park from commercial office to flex/R&D, by adding drive-in doors and making changes to the shared parking area to increase loading capacity. The company has allocated around $1.5 million in capital expenses for this conversion.

Fueling the flight-to-quality trend amplified by the pandemic, companies are now investing in Class A, amenity-rich office buildings. This shift means that many Class B and Class C properties will likely be considered for conversion and redevelopment, bringing both opportunities and challenges for office investors.

Cushman & Wakefield Managing Director Graham Savage, Executive Managing Director Jonathan Carpenter and Associate Dawes Milchling represented the seller in the transaction.