Big-dollar investors have snatched up three commercial properties in San Antonio in recent weeks, including a distinctive nine-story office tower next to North Star Mall and a cluster of shopping centers on the Northwest Side.
The Dallas real estate firm Dogwood Commercial on April 17 bought the 164,000-square foot San Pedro Plaza office tower at 7330 San Pedro Ave., a block south of the road’s intersection with Loop 410, for an undisclosed price, Bexar County deed records show.
Dogwood, which specializes in transforming “undervalued” properties to make them “high-performing,” plans to launch renovations of the 39-year-old building this summer, according to its website. Emails and phone calls to the firm and its CEO, Ben Appleby, weren’t returned Monday.
The building’s prior owner was the California real estate investment firm Buchanan Street Partners, which had owned it since 2015. An entity linked with Dogwood took a $14.7 million loan from Frost Bank to make the purchase, the county records show.
The Bexar Appraisal District valued the 3.7-acre building at $20 million this year.
The commercial real estate firm JLL brokered the transaction. At the time of closing, the building was 90% occupied, said Drew Fuller, managing director of JLL Capital Markets, in an email.
Last month, Dogwood made another investment in San Antonio, purchasing the 3.9-acre, 52,000 square-foot Ingram Place shopping center at 3235 Wurzbach Road beside Ingram Park Mall, for an unknown price, county property records show.
The Bexar Appraisal District assessed the 44-year-old shopping center at $6.5 million this year.
Another retail landmark, the Colonnade cluster of shopping centers on the Northwest Side, was purchased in March by a joint venture between the local real estate firms Headwall Investments and SageView Partners, according to county property records and a news release.
The cluster — which includes four shopping centers along Interstate 10, including the one across Wurzbach Road from an H-E-B — is home to well-known tenants such as Firehouse Subs, First Watch and HoneyBaked Ham Co.
It includes a total of nearly 127,000 square feet of space across 5.4 acres.
In making the purchase, Headwall launched its “Shopping Center Fund II” investment portfolio, which targets “unanchored convenience retail centers in major Texas metro markets.”
Headwall hopes to raise $100 million for the fund, according to the release.
The firm has in recent years bought shopping centers across Texas, including the Shoppes at Wilderness Oaks in Stone Oak in August. It is also known for rehabbing the historic building at 2101 McCullough Ave. in Monte Vista — formerly a flower and antiques store — into office space called The Allen, where it now has its offices.
A phone call and email to Headwall were not returned on Monday.
Market update
San Antonio’s retail market has recovered well from the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching an occupancy rate of 96% in the fourth quarter of last year, according to a recent report from the real estate firm CBRE. The report linked the steady increase in demand to a “surge in travel and leisure activities” in the local metro area, noting that 2023 was the busiest year yet for San Antonio International Airport.
The local office market is still struggling, however, absorbing only about 14,000 square feet of vacant space in the first quarter of this year, according to another CBRE report, with asking rents dipping slightly, by $0.08 per square foot of space.
Even with absorption remaining “anemic,” there are reasons to be optimistic about the market for the rest of this year, CBRE said in the report, mentioning that it is “tracking” over 75 tenants seeking space in the market.
In good news for the local office market, the global software powerhouse Oracle has doubled the amount of space it is leasing in the Spectrum building at 613 NW Loop 410 on the North Side — just across the highway from North Star Mall and San Pedro Plaza — so it will now encompass 34,000 square feet across two floors in the building, according to an announcement last week from Hartman Properties, a commercial real estate management company from Houston whose subsidiary, Hartman VREIT XXI, owns the building.
“This decision signals a promising shift towards the re-occupancy of office space for key markets like San Antonio in 2024,” said Ami Figg, Hartman’s vice president of leasing, in the release.
