Regions West | Seattle/Portland
Seattle Firm Buys $41M Scottsdale Office
Sept 10, 2007
By: Tonie Auer, Southwest Correspondent

Development Services of America Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Services Group of America Inc. has purchased the Financial Center at Kierland in Scottsdale, Ariz., for around $41 million to serve as its corporate headquarters.

The formerly Seattle-based company relocated its corporate headquarters to temporary space in three commercial office buildings in Scottsdale last summer. The acquisition of the approximately 175,000-square-foot, Class A office building at 16100 N. 71st St. in Scottsdale will allow the firm to consolidate approximately 225 employees into 110,000 square feet on the top three floors of the SGA Corporate Center at Kierland (pictured) this fall.

The seller was a company formed by Southwest Property Ventures Inc. of Phoenix. With the purchase, the building has been renamed SGA Corporate Center at Kierland.

“Thomas Stewart, chairman of Development Services, has lived in the Scottsdale area for more than 25 years while his headquarters have been in Seattle. He knows the terrain and the community quite well and he wants a first class environment and housing for his employees,” Charles Hall III, senior vice president with Grubb & Ellis|BRE Commercial L.L.C., who represented the buyer, told CPN.

The SGA Corporate Center at Kierland is still under construction and was planned as a speculative lease project, Hall said.

“It is a new building and is the right size for the company’s immediate and future plans,” Hall added. “The Scottsdale location was essential and is in close proximity to Scottsdale Municipal Airport where the company is adding hangars for corporate airplanes. It has good freeway access, too.”

The shell will be completed in September or October, at which time tenant improvements can begin, he said. The firm will move into the space in October or November.

The sale of The Financial Center at Kierland was brokered on behalf of the buyer by Hall and Peter Menna with Grubb & Ellis|BRE Commercial's office group. Kelly McKone and Leighton Fisk of Kelton Cos. represented the sellers.

Hall and Menna have the leasing assignment for the remaining 65,000 square feet of office space.

Services Group of America is a privately held diversified corporation with operations in foodservice distribution; custom meat cutting and processing; fresh produce marketing, and commercial property management and development. The firm has annual revenues of $2.5 billion and is listed by Forbes magazine as in the top third of America’s largest privately held corporations and is one of the largest privately held companies in Arizona.

 
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