News

Harvest Properties and joint-venture partner Independencia Asset Management LLC said Sept. 20 that they have completed their acquisition and recap of a mixed-use property located in downtown Berkeley, California. Financial terms weren’t announced. The property, known as Constitution Square, is a three-story, 36,000 square foot building located at 2168 Shattuck Avenue.

PRESS RELEASE

EMERYVILLE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Harvest Properties and joint-venture partner, Independencia Asset Management LLC (“IAM”), have completed the acquisition and recapitalization of a mixed-use property located in the heart of Downtown Berkeley, California, for an undisclosed amount. Known as Constitution Square, the property is a three-story, 36,000 square foot building located at 2168 Shattuck Avenue directly adjacent to the Downtown Berkeley BART Station and its newly renovated BART Plaza.
Since 2015, Harvest and previous partner, The Roxborough Group, completed over $1.5 million in capital improvements, including lobby and elevator cab renovations, a roof replacement and upgrades to the HVAC and security systems. The partnership also completed creative office space improvements and upgraded the building’s retail suites, yielding a highly improved, modern work environment which ultimately resulted in increasing occupancy from 54 percent to 100 percent today.
“From the outset of our partnership, Roxborough shared our vision to revitalize Constitution Square from top to bottom and transform it into a stabilized, institutional quality property,” said Kathryn Collins, Partner at Harvest Properties.
“Following that successful partnership, we are equally excited to forge ahead with a new partner and opportunity to own this asset over the long term. We remain very optimistic about the Downtown Berkeley market and its prospects for continued growth and believe we will be able to leverage our knowledge of the asset and strong tenant relationships to create additional value in this next phase of ownership,” added Collins.
Marc Perrin, Managing Partner at Roxborough, stated, “Our significant efforts resulted in the exceptional transformation of a once dated and dilapidated traditional office building to a vibrant and modern creative office space and we are very pleased to have worked closely with Harvest to achieve this result in such a supply constrained San Francisco Bay Area submarket.”
This investment represents Harvest’s third office acquisition in Downtown Berkeley and its first venture with Independencia. “Independencia is thrilled to embark upon this new partnership with Harvest through the purchase of Constitution Square, our second commercial investment in the Bay Area and the first deployment of our newly formed core location fund. We believe it provides an attractive opportunity to access a robust and growing market in an area with significant barriers to entry and strong demand drivers,” Chief Operating Officer, Felipe Figueroa, said.
Adam Lasoff, Seth Siegel and Steve Hermann at Cushman & Wakefield represented Harvest and Roxborough on the transaction.
About Harvest Properties
Harvest Properties is a vertically-integrated, full-service commercial real estate investment firm that specializes in the acquisition, reposition, entitlement, development, management and financing of commercial property, primarily through joint-venture investments in Northern California. Over the last decade, Harvest has become an established leader in the marketplace by generating attractive returns for its financial partners, providing creative solutions and outstanding service. Harvest Properties’ portfolio comprises approximately ten million square feet of office, industrial, R&D and retail properties in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, please visit www.harvestproperties.com.
About The Roxborough Group
The Roxborough Group is a private real estate investment firm founded in 2013. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the firm has a broad mandate to invest in all real estate asset classes, both directly and with operating partners. Roxborough focuses on opportunistic, value-add and transitional real estate assets, high-yielding real estate debt, real estate-related operating businesses, as well as high quality, lower risk and longer duration real estate investments. For more information, please visit www.theroxboroughgroup.com.
About Independencia Asset Management LLC – IAM
IAM is a real estate private equity firm headquartered in Miami with an additional office in Boston. Since incorporating in US in 2004, IAM has invested in more than 18 million square feet of core-plus and value-add office, retail and industrial assets in 18 states with ten different local operating partners. This investment is part of IAM’s newly established investment vehicle, “Fondo de Inversion Independencia Core US I”, which is a publicly traded fund listed on the Chilean stock exchange. IAM’s parent company, founded in Santiago in 1990, currently manages the largest real estate investment fund in Chile and is considered the country’s industry leader in terms of size and fund yields.