A mixed-use portfolio in Old Town Alexandria that Asana Partners assembled between 2016 and 2018 and invested $20M to renovate has hit the market.

Asana owns 815 1/2 King Street in Old Town, Alexandria

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm is looking to sell a 21-building portfolio totaling just over 200K SF on and around Alexandria’s historic King Street commercial corridor, according to a JLL Capital Markets brochure.

JLL Senior Director Daniel Naughton announced the listing last week in a LinkedIn post, saying it represents the largest-ever assemblage of properties on King Street. 

JLL didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Asana declined to comment.

The low-rise buildings include national retailers Sephora, Ben & Jerry’s, Alo Yoga, Emmy Squared, Patagonia, and Warby Parker. Its office tenants include Compass Real Estate, KVS Title and Sourced Intelligence, and it has at least 38 apartment units.

The portfolio is 76% leased, according to the brochure, with the retail portion 94% leased, the office 49% leased and the residential portion 95% leased. 

Two of the properties, a 6,500 SF building at 900 Prince St. and a 4,500 SF building at 1104 King St. are fully vacant, and 12 of the properties are fully leased, JLL brochure says. 

The brokerage breaks up the portfolio into “Lower King” with five assets, “Middle King” with 11 assets and “Upper King” with five assets. 

JLL’s Danny Naughton, Jordan Lex, Danny Finkle and Dave Baker are the investment sales advisers marketing the property, and Evan Parker is the financing adviser. 

Asana acquired at least 15 of the properties between December 2016 and July 2017, Bisnow first reported at the time. It purchased the first eight properties at the end of 2016 for $40M from PMA Properties. It purchased six more totaling 35K SF for $21.9M in August 2017. 

By the end of 2017, the company had spent $115M to acquire 23 properties totaling 210K SF on and just off of King Street, Asana Managing Partner Reed Kracke told Bisnow in a December 2017 interview.

Kracke said the stretch had “so many of the factors that are compelling for retailers today,” pointing to factors like income levels and density.

“The buildings are really irreplaceable historic buildings that have been around — some since the 1700s, 1800s and early 1900s,” he said in the 2017 interview. “The authenticity of the buildings on the street is not something you can re-create.”

Old Town Alexandria’s 719K SF of high-street retail space has a 5.84% vacancy rate, according to Dochter & Alexander Retail Advisors’ latest market report released last month. Its 5M SF of office space is 17.6% vacant, according to CBRE’s Northern Virginia first-quarter office report.

Asana has $7B in “neighborhood assets under management” across 25 cities, according to its website. In D.C., Asana also owns Sam’s Park and Shop, a 50K SF strip shopping center on Connecticut Avenue in Cleveland Park, which it purchased from Federal Realty for $39M in 2021.

A subsidiary of The Cheesecake Factory has been hit with a $2.7M lawsuit over the sudden closure of a large restaurant in the Brickworks redevelopment.

Culinary Dropout closed in the Brickworks development in West Midtown Atlanta in January, less than two years after it opened.

Asana Partners filed a lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court on April 14 against an affiliate of Phoenix-based Fox Restaurant Concepts after it shuttered the Culinary Dropout eatery in January. The suit says Asana is owed millions in unpaid rent and build-out costs.

The lawsuit names CDO Holding Co. LLC, which is registered to Fox Restaurant Concepts, as a defendant, claiming it guaranteed the 11-year lease for nearly 12K SF at 1000 Marietta St. FRC founder Sam Fox signed the guarantee for the lease, which was filed as an exhibit in the lawsuit.

Culinary Dropout signed the lease in October 2021, opened in fall 2023 and closed Jan. 15, one of nearly a dozen restaurants to fold in West Midtown in recent months.

Asana, which is being represented by Arnall Golden Gregory attorneys Knox Withers and Kelsey O’Neill, claims FRC owes nearly $2.7M, including nearly $1.9M for unamortized tenant improvement allowances and $463K in leasing commissions. Culinary Dropout owes $50K a month for the lease, which will continue to accrue and includes escalation clauses, the lawsuit says.

“Tenant breached the lease by ceasing its business operations in the premises and by failing to pay certain monetary charges when they became due that are tenant’s obligations under the lease,” the suit says. 

FRC hadn’t filed an answer to the lawsuit as of press time, nor did it or The Cheesecake Factory return messages seeking comment. Asana Managing Partner Terry Brown declined to comment.

In addition to Culinary Dropout, Ford Fry’s Superica, Postino WineCafe, West Egg Cafe, Humble Pie and Snooze A.M. Eatery have all called it quits since the start of 2024 in what has been one of the hottest foodie destinations in Metro Atlanta. 

Expensive parking, high rents and fewer-than-expected office workers have all contributed to the struggles for eateries in the area, Bisnow previously reported.

“Rents are too high, the population is too low, and parking is tough. I think a lot of landlords are signing leases for the sake of signing leases,” Peter Kruskamp, president of retail brokerage The Shumacher Group, previously told Bisnow.

Charlotte-based Asana, in a Jan. 13 letter sent from AGG to Culinary Dropout and filed with the suit, demanded that the restaurant operator send it recent financial statements. It was unclear if FRC complied.

FRC, which also owns restaurant chains Flower Child, Zinburger and The Arrogant Butcher, should be required to pay the difference in rents if Asana leases its space to a new tenant for less than what Culinary Dropout was paying, the suit says.

FRC continues to operate a Culinary Dropout in Dunwoody.

The Cheesecake Factory purchased FRC in 2019 for more than $350M. The chain acts as Cheesecake Factory’s “incubation engine, innovating new food, dining and hospitality experiences to create fresh, exciting concepts,” the company said on its website. In 2024, FRC reported full-year sales of $6.4M per location, or around $1,100 per SF.

Asana Partners sold the Plaza on Ponce and Morningside Village shopping centers in separate transactions for a combined price of $67.5 million. Atlanta-based 26th Street Partners was the buyer.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle reported that the Majestic Diner and Plaza Theater signed long-term leases at Plaza on Ponce before the sale.

Asana entered the Atlanta market in 2017 with its purchase of Plaza on Ponce, a historic shopping center on Ponce de Leon Avenue. It paid $18.1 million in 2017. It recently sold for $36.1 million. 

Asana bought Morningside Village in 2018 for $21 million. The center spans two sides of North Highland Avenue and includes tenants such as The Family Dog. The property just sold for $31.4 million.

A developer is planning on taking the risk of speculative office construction in the height of the coronavirus pandemic, betting that the appeal of working in a single-user building converted from a former Coca-Cola bottling plant in Atlanta’s historic Old Fourth Ward neighborhood will make its bet pay off.

Courtesy of Capital Real Estate Group

Rendering, by Atlanta architectural firm ASD | Sky, for the adaptive reuse of the former Coca-Cola bottling plant in the Old Fourth Ward.

Charlotte-based Asana Partners is readying to kick-start the conversion of the 100K SF former bottling plant at 560 Edgewood Ave. into an office building that will deliver in 2022, Capital Real Estate Group founder Bennett Gottlieb said.

Gottlieb’s firm has been tapped by Asana to lease the property, which sits along the BeltLine Eastside Trail. Gottlieb said the project is unusual for adaptive reuse in Atlanta, where former warehouses and strip centers become mixed-use projects, but typically don’t offer office footprints bigger than 50K SF.

“If you’re a tenant in that size range, there aren’t single-tenant opportunities in the Old Fourth Ward,” he said.

Despite the economic fallout from the pandemic, Midtown, both Eastside, where the Old Fourth Ward is located, and Westside has remained active with office users looking for space. Last month, email marketing firm MailChimp announced that it would anchor New City’s $300M 760 Ralph McGill Blvd. development with a 300K SF lease. MailChimp was one of two major leases inked in Metro Atlanta during the third quarter.

“These notable deals represent the ongoing attraction of metro Atlanta for companies to locate and expand, despite the pandemic,” Colliers International officials wrote in a recent report. “This is further validated by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce’s pipeline of projects. When recently asked about their outlook for business activity in the region, leaders have noted they have never been busier with prospects.”

Gene Kansas Commercial Real Estate founder Gene Kansas, who specializes in leasing historic and adaptive reuse properties in Atlanta, said these projects have been relatively unaffected by the coronavirus-caused office leasing slowdown. The activity has encouraged developers to move forward with adaptive reuse projects during the pandemic.

“It’s not just, ‘Well, we think someone will like this,'” Kansas said. “We’re getting the phone calls.”

This is Asana’s latest move into Atlanta’s trendy neighborhoods with adaptive reuse projects. The firm purchased both the iconic Krog Street Market and Stove Works back in 2018. And this past March, Asana bought Brickworks, a 194K SF adaptive reuse project at the corner of Marietta Street and Howell Mill Road.

Gottlieb said one of the potential draws to 560 Edgewood, is its location in a qualified opportunity zone. While Asana didn’t take advantage of raising funding from an opportunity zone fund for the project, Gottlieb said, the developer sees the designation as an added incentive for potential tenants, who can claim a tax break for locating in the area.

Gottlieb said single-tenant office projects in hot Midtown neighborhoods also will gain more popularity in a post-pandemic world, especially when companies will have the ability to control access to the space.

“[Tenants] are formulating plans related to their re-entry to the workplace, and control seems to be the most important thing,” he said. “When you’re in a big mixed-use building, control is harder to accomplish.”