Miller Investment, Hayden snap up Walnut Hill, Exton real estate

This is an expansion story from 2 earlier posts:
Wayne: http://omegacre.blogspot.com/2011/07/mim-hayden-fund-buys-office-buildings.html
Exton: http://omegacre.blogspot.com/2012/07/brandywine-realty-sells-phila-area.html

by Natalie Kostelni

While local real estate investment trusts are unloading selected suburban office buildings, a local real estate fund has picked up a dozen of these properties as it banks on tenants wanting to occupy space in outlying areas.

A fund comprised of Miller Investment Management and Hayden Real Estate, both locally owned firms, bought Walnut Hill Plaza in King of Prussia. In a separate transaction, the Miller-Hayden partnership, along with the Davis Cos. of Boston, bought a dozen buildings in Exton. Both deals closed on the same day.

The local fund, called MIM-Hayden Real Estate Funds, paid $11 million for Walnut Hill, a four-story, 155,073-square-foot building at 150 S. Warner Road and across from a new Wegmans store.
Last summer Thomas Properties Group Inc. relinquished three of its suburban office properties — Four Falls Corporate Center, Oak Hill Plaza and Walnut Hill Plaza — in a deed in lieu of foreclosure. The Walnut Hill property was put up for auction in recent weeks.

“At the end of the day, we underwrote it and said we can spend $13 million on it,” said J. Anthony Hayden, chairman of Hayden Real Estate.

The fund ended up getting the property for $2 million less than it allotted and plans to plow roughly that amount back into the building on interior and exterior renovations. The building was 50 percent vacant when the fund bought it but the fund has already arranged an expansion with its tenant Susquehanna Bank, to grow their space to 22,000 square feet from 12,000 square feet, and is lining up some other leases to chip away at the vacancy.

“We think by the end of the year we will be fully leased,” said Tony Hayden Jr. “There’s more activity here than any other building we own.”
In the other transaction, the MIM-Hayden Real Estate Funds in conjunction with the Davis Cos. swooped in and bought 11 buildings within the Oaklands Corporate Center in Exton from Brandywine Realty Trust for $52.7 million. The portfolio consists of 10 single-story and one two-story office-flex properties totaling 466,719 square feet. The properties were 81.6 percent leased at closing.

The buildings were constructed between 1987 and 1999 and consist of: 412 Creamery Way, 429 Creamery Way, 436 Creamery Way, 440 Creamery Way, 456 Creamery Way, 457 Creamery Way, 467 Creamery Way, 468 Thomas Jones Way, 486 Thomas Jones Way, 111 Arrandale Blvd. and 481 John Young Way.
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