Beacon Partners has sold The Station at LoSo, a mixed-use development in lower South End, for nearly $92 million.
The Charlotte developer closed Aug. 7 on its $91.8 million sale to Crestlight Capital and Corebridge Real Estate Investors, according to Mecklenburg County property records. Beacon will continue to handle office leasing and property management duties at the development.
Beacon hired JLL to market The Station at LoSo, at 3600 and 3700 South Blvd. It was listed for sale in late February. Ryan Clutter, Mike McDonald, CJ Liuzzo and Daniel Flynn with JLL's capital markets investment sales and advisory team represented the seller.
Detroit-based Crestlight and New York-based Corebridge did not have brokerage representation. JLL's Travis Anderson, Taylor Allison and Alexis Kaiser handled acquisition financing on behalf of the buyers.
The development, which includes two Class A 100,000-square-foot, five-story office buildings with ground-floor retail, sits on 2.2 acres next to the Scaleybark light-rail station. It delivered in 2023. Beacon acquired the property in October 2021 for about $9.9 million, according to county property records.
John Coury, founder and managing partner at Crestlight, said the firm has been tracking the Charlotte market for some time and saw The Station at LoSo development as a stable investment. Crestlight previously owned The Towers at SouthPark at 6000 and 6100 Fairview Road. The firm invested $20 million to upgrade the SouthPark office property.
"(The Charlotte market) has been an outlier in terms of performance for office post-Covid," he said. "We really like the profile of this asset being like new construction and almost fully leased ... This location is going to continue to improve as more multifamily fills in, and we think there's going to be even more recovery here."
Clutter, senior managing director at JLL, told the Charlotte Business Journal that the process was competitive from start to finish and the sale price was within the asking range. The capital markets team conducted more than 30 tours throughout the sale process, he said. The Station at LoSo has experienced 36% rent growth year over year, Clutter said. That growth is driven by high demand and a lack of supply in new Class A and trophy office space, he said.
"I think we share in (Crestlight's and Corebridge's) vision for the property that it's going to continue to experience great rent growth over the next few years." Clutter said. "With the capital markets still a little more challenged for office investing, it creates an ideal window to acquire these assets with strong leasing fundamentals and an opportunity to really push the return to attractive levels over the investment period."
The development is about 90% occupied and has just 6,700 square feet of available space with prospective tenants showing serious interest. Clutter said that space will likely be leased in the very near future.
Current tenants include Skyla Credit Union, which anchors the development with its 50,000-square-foot headquarters; Home Solutions, which relocated its office to the property in February; Elevate Sports Ventures; architecture firm CPL; Gambling.com; Beacon Partners; Dwell Design Studios; Crete United; Mythic; and V3 Southeast.
The Station at LoSo also includes MAA LoSo, formerly Novel LoSo, a 344-unit apartment community at 4015 Craft St. that delivered in 2021. Charlotte-based Crescent Communities developed the site before selling it to Mid-America Apartment Communities for $140 million in September 2022. Ello House, a 343-unit property at 3615 Tryclan Drive developed by Proffitt Dixon Partners, delivered adjacent to the site in early 2024. It sold for $89.3 million in late July to Camden Property Trust.
A third and final phase is expected to include ground-up office construction and additional multifamily units. In February, Beacon filed plans with the city of Charlotte for a 342-unit multifamily community to be built on a 3.8-acre parcel at 122 Freeland Lane, next to the office and retail buildings. The Station at LoSo will total about 1 million square feet once it is completely built out.