Lincoln Property Co. has purchased Charlotte-based developer The Spectrum Cos. in a deal that Lincoln says will help it grow its footprint across the Carolinas.

Dallas-based Lincoln will combine its Carolinas platform with Spectrum and will also include Spectrum’s northern and central Florida multifamily business, Lincoln said in a Tuesday press release. The companies say the move will help boost the combined firm’s development and acquisition pipeline.

The companies’ portfolios will merge well because of Spectrum’s strong focus on multifamily development, executives from both firms told the Charlotte Business Journal, which first reported the news. Spectrum has developed almost 7,000 multifamily units since its founding, according to the release.

The sum of the sale was not disclosed.

“Lincoln has been focused on growing and investing in the Carolinas for many years, and Spectrum presented a unique opportunity to accelerate that strategy,” Johno Harris, senior executive vice president at Lincoln, told Bisnow.

He added that Spectrum’s “exceptional team” complements Lincoln’s existing platform well.

“As we looked at the next phase of growth in the region, it became clear that bringing our organizations together would create a stronger business, expand our capabilities and position us to better serve clients and pursue new opportunities across the Carolinas,” he said.

A spokesperson for Spectrum didn’t comment in time for publication.

Spectrum’s 43 employees will move from a 5K SF office into Lincoln’s two-floor, 200K SF headquarters at Piedmont Town Center in SouthPark, which already employs 260 people, CBJ reported. No job cuts are expected.

Executives told CBJ that Spectrum’s name will soon change to Lincoln.

Lincoln’s global portfolio spans 720M SF, according to the company’s website. It manages 27M SF in the Carolinas. The developer’s Charlotte-based work includes the 3M SF Legacy Union office tower complex.

Spectrum’s 4.4M SF portfolio will now become “a significant expansion of Lincoln’s regional footprint,” according to the press release. The company’s local assets previously included Vantage South End, a 635K SF mixed-use development that it sold to Cousins Properties in 2024.

Charlotte ranks among “the most attractive markets for investors” in the country, according to CBRE’s 2026 North America Investor Intentions Survey. Charlotte’s multifamily market is “maintaining stronger demand fundamentals than most peer markets,” a first-quarter Matthews report said, with a 6.2 percent vacancy rate a signal that demand has absorbed new supply.

Institutional Property Advisors (IPA), a division of Marcus & Millichap, has listed Pacific Trails Apartments, an 84-unit apartment property located in Covina within the San Gabriel Valley. The price is open bid.

“Located close to entertainment and shopping along Arrow Highway and Azusa Avenue, Pacific Trails Apartments has benefitted from numerous recent improvements and remains an excellent candidate for additional value enhancing renovations to optimize operations and increase value,” said Alexander Garcia, Jr., IPA executive director.

Garcia and IPA’s Kyle Pinkalla and Chris Zorbas are representing the seller, a private party.

Built in 1977 and renovated in 2014, Pacific Trails Apartments is a gated, nine-building property that has received unit upgrades and improvements to the swimming pool and spa, barbecue grills, fire pit and courtyard seating. The property is located off Arrow Highway, close to State Route 66 and near Interstates 10, 210, and 605.

San Francisco-based Rentberry, a provider of technology-driven property rental and management, unveiled plans to explore the acquisition of WeWork, which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This strategic move, backed by key venture capital funds including Berkeley Hills Capital, represents a vision to synergize WeWork’s coworking spaces with Rentberry’s Flexible Living concept.

“By aligning WeWork’s expansive coworking ecosystem with our Flexible Living concept, we aim to create a global network of spaces that support a dynamic, mobile lifestyle, catering to the needs of today’s professionals,” the company said in a statement.

RentBerry said it’s collaborating with WeWork’s advisors, PJT Partners, to submit the acquisition offer during the week of Feb. 19. The company looks forward to sharing more details as the acquisition process progresses.

At the behest of New York-based Mack Real Estate Group (MREG), the Arizona State Land Department has agreed to auction off 2,300 acres of land surrounding the $40 billion Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plants in N. Phoenix. The Phoenix Business Journal reports it’s meant for the buildout of a massive technology and science park reminiscent of Silicon Valley.

The auction is scheduled for May 29 with a starting bid at $56.28 million, or about $24,000 an acre. Anyone can bid on the property, but more often than not, the winning bidder is the one who initiates the auction. MREG already has an extensive portfolio of projects across the Valley of the Sun.

The developer “intends to construct and install all of the necessary infrastructure needed for development of the subject and then market parcels for sale to end-users and a variety of uses” including industrial, commercial, multifamily and more.

Orlando-based SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. has made an unsolicited offer to buy theme park operator Cedar Fair for $3.4B, according to Bloomberg.

If the deal goes through between the two publicly traded companies, SeaWorld could add 13 theme parks and thousands of acres of real estate to its portfolio. 

SeaWorld’s Antartica: Empire of the Penguin exhibit

Cedar Fair, based in Sandusky, Ohio, owns 13 parks, 12 of which operate seasonally. According to a 2020 year-end Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Cedar Fair’s real estate holdings include about 4,500 acres. SeaWorld owns about 2,000 acres. 

CNBC reported that Cedar Fair’s market cap is $2.8B compared to SeaWorld’s market cap of $4.6B.

CNBC quoted Stifel analyst Steven Wieczynski, who wrote in a research note that SeaWorld “has lacked a more robust geographical footprint and lack of season pass penetration,” and acquiring Cedar Fair “would give them a bigger presence across North America and would allow them to more effectively cross market some of their bigger assets.”

SeaWorld suffered from bad publicity following the 2013 documentary Blackfish, and has since emphasized conservation, research and rides at its theme parks. 

In Sandusky, Cedar Fair’s flagship Cedar Point theme park sits on 870 acres with a waterpark, hotels, restaurants, employee housing complexes, three marinas, an upscale campground, a sports center and 145 undeveloped acres.

Cedar Fair’s other properties include:

• King’s Island, near Cincinnati — 680 acres.
• Knott’s Berry Farm, near Los Angeles — 175 acres.
• California’s Great America, in Santa Clara, California — 175 acres.
• Schlitterbahn Waterpark & Resort in New Braunfels, Texas — 90 acres.
• Schlitterbahn Waterpark Galveston in Galveston, Texas — 40 acres.
• Canada’s Wonderland, near Toronto — 295 acres.
• Carowinds, in Charlotte, North Carolina — 400 acres.
• Kings Dominion, near Richmond, Virginia — 740 acres.
• Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in Allentown, Pennsylvania — 210 acres.
• Worlds of Fun, in Kansas City, Missouri — 350 acres.
• Valleyfair, near Minneapolis/St. Paul — 190 acres.
• Michigan’s Adventure, in Muskegon, Michigan — 260 acres.

Cedar Fair also manages and operates a theme park in Gilroy, California. All of the parks operate seasonally except for Knott’s Berry Farm, which is open year-round.

Combined, Cedar Fair’s parks host 26 million guests annually and generate revenues of more than $1.3B, according to its website. A November earnings release indicated attendance in Q3 of 2021 was 82% compared to the same period of 2019, yet net revenues totaled a record $753M, up 5% from the same time frame. 

According to SeaWorld’s 2020 year-end filing, it owns just over 2,000 acres that include:

• SeaWorld, Discovery Cove and Aquatica in Orlando — 418 acres.
• Busch Gardens, Adventure Island and SeaWorld headquarters in Tampa — 362 acres.
• A breeding and holding facility in Dade City — 109 acres.
• Sesame Place San Diego — 66 acres.
• SeaWorld, Aquatica and Discovery Point in San Antonio — 415 acres.
• Busch Gardens and Water Country USA in Williamsburg, Virginia — 654 acres.
• Sesame Place, near Philadelphia — 55 acres.
• SeaWorld also leases approximately 190 acres from the city of San Diego for SeaWorld San Diego. 

Of its holdings, about 400 acres of land are for future development.

According to the Sandusky Register, local officials expressed concern that Cedar Fair’s corporate headquarters could be relocated and affect the tax base if the company were to be acquired. However, Cedar Fair has been targeted for takeover before; company leaders rejected a $4B takeover bid from Six Flags in 2019. 

Real estate services giant Savills is acquiring T3 Advisors, a specialist in life sciences tenant representation, in an effort to expand Savills’ expertise in that fast-growing sector. 

Founded in 2001 with offices in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Palo Alto, California, T3 will rebrand as T3 Advisors, A Savills Company. T3 founder and CEO Roy Hirshland will become a vice chairman at Savills and continue to lead T3 Advisors. The buyer didn’t disclose a price.

“The acquisition of T3 will further amplify the life science and technology industry advisory services that Savills can provide to clients on a global basis,” Savills Group CEO Mark Ridley said in a statement. “These are key growth sectors for us and are integral to our continued strategic expansion across North America.”

Though already in a growth mode, life sciences got a boost from the coronavirus pandemic, and the demand for space in life sciences hubs is still expanding, pushed by investment in the sector from private venture capital as well as federal sources like the National Institutes of Health.

Development in the sector is also brisk nationwide. San Diego State University is developing the 80-acre Mission Valley complex, which will include life sciences facilities. In Houston, the 37-acre TMC3 project will seek to gestate ideas from the Texas Medical Center into full-fledged companies. In Pittsburgh, a 1915-vintage Ford Motor plant is being reborn as The Assembly, a $330M biomedical research hub anchored by the University of Pittsburgh. 

Boston, San Francisco and San Diego remain the top U.S. clusters for life sciences, according to JLL, but other markets are emerging quickly, such as Charlotte, Seattle, Denver and Austin.

In New York, which is also a rising life sciences hub, CBRE reports that life sciences leasing has totaled 257.4K SF so far this year, up from 155.9K SF in all of 2020 and 72.4K SF in 2019.