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DEAL WATCH

Cornerstone RE Advisers Offers Chicago Complex

06/30/08

Hartford-based Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers has put a 428-unit Illinois apartment complex on the market as it seeks to continue an active period of deal-making.

Since October, the real estate investment management company — a subsidiary of MassMutal — has sold three properties for more than $200 million, and it has recently listed four more properties for sale.

Cornerstone’s latest property listing is the Lakes of Schaumburg apartment complex in Illinois, which has been a part of the company’s portfolio since 1989.

The Chicago office of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler is marketing the property for Cornerstone.

Marty O’Connell, managing director with Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, said the property could sell in the “upper $50 million range,” fetching $140,000 per unit.

“Schaumburg is an extremely vibrant suburb of Chicago,” O’Connell said. “There are a lot of jobs in the area. It’s near the Motorola headquarters, the Schaumburg convention center and there are a lot of good employers in the area.”

O’Connell asserted that the suburban Chicago apartment market is still strong. He predicted that the property would be “highly sought after” by investors.

Since 2005, Cornerstone has invested $5 million into renovating the Chicago apartment complex.

Cornerstone currently has a $9.6 billion portfolio with another $1.4 billion available for new purchases, according to its Web site. Officials with the company did not return phone calls.

The company has three other significant properties listed for sale: the 182-room Virginia Crossings Resort hotel in Glen Allen, Va., the 282-unit Landing at Jack London Square rental complex in Oakland, Calif., and the 240-unit Heritage on the Merrimack apartment building in Bedford, N.H.

Those listings come on the heels of the $170 million sale of the Ritz Carlton in Pasadena, Calif., in October and the $21.5 million sale of an office building at 465 South Street in Morris Township, N.J., in March. Cornerstone also sold the Wyndham Garden Hotel in Mt. Olive, N.J., in February, but a sale price was not released.

The Hartford’s Backup Plan

IBM is touting its 115,000-square-foot, energy-efficient facility in Boulder, Colo., as the “greenest” data center in North America.

It’s the same project The Hartford Financial Services Group announced in December, when it said it planned to spend $100 million on a backup data center that would be built and managed by IBM.

The reason for the investment is safety. The new Boulder facility is designed to provide disaster recovery in case the company’s main data center in Hartford is knocked offline for any reason.

The Hartford is in the process of a $150 million project here in Hartford that includes construction of a main data center and renovation of 106,200 square feet of existing office space.

House Hunt While Driving

As technology evolves, so do the way real estate transactions can take place and listings can be viewed.

Coldwell Banker Real Estate is taking advantage of new technology as the first national full-service real estate company to distribute its listings to a GPS device.

The service will be provided through Dash Express, a GPS navigation device, which will allow customers to call up Coldwell Banker listings in their car along with directions and other vital information.

Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage has more than 50 offices in New York and Connecticut, including a principal office in Danbury.

Sean O’Leary is a Hartford Business Journal staff writer.