Trinity Capital Advisors and Nuveen Real Estate have unloaded Alexander Commerce Park, a three-building, 441,072-square-foot logistics portfolio in Raleigh-Durham’s Research Triangle Park. The property sold for $80.2 million. The park, delivered in 2023, is 100% occupied by four tenants, including Upper Deck, Wolfspeed, Wesco, and Running Logistics. Prologis was the buyer.

Trinity has been busy in the Triangle region. Over the past 10 years, the firm has acquired or developed over 9.0 million square feet of office, industrial, and life science assets totaling $2.2 billion in capitalization. Major projects include Eastgate 540 (980,000 square feet across six industrial buildings), 147 Exchange (274,370 square foot industrial building), Park Point (645,000 square foot adaptive reuse life science park), Spark LS (1.7 million square foot life science campus), and Southport Innovation Center (911,000 square foot life science/flex manufacturing campus).

Pete Pittroff, Dave Andrews, and Zachary Lloyd led the JLL Investment Sales and Advisory team representing the seller.

Madison Capital Group has closed $34.3 million in financing for the development of Madison Aquiline, a luxury garden-style multifamily community in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill’s Research Triangle. Centennial Bank is providing the financing for the Apex project.

Madison Capital Group’s affiliate Madison Communities, plans to build 218 units with granite countertops, an integrated clubhouse with a fitness center and a pool and pool deck complete with grilling stations and a fire pit. Additional features will include a café island with a wet bar, a cyber lounge, flexible workspaces and a coffee bar.

The Research Triangle continues to see significant population and economic growth. Wake County, now the most populous county in North Carolina, has seen employment levels surpass pre-pandemic numbers.

The Raleigh-Durham area remains a hotspot for growth. Apex, in particular, has experienced unprecedented growth, with a 90% increase in population since 2010, adding approximately 33,600 new residents during that time.

Driftwood Capital acquired the Marriott Raleigh Durham Research Triangle Park, a 225-key full-service, hotel located in North Carolina’s Research Triangle area. Driftwood will carry out an extensive renovation project to enhance numerous features throughout the Hotel. They’ve committed $9 million on upgrades that include improvements to guest rooms, implementing a central air system, and introducing new amenities such as an expanded fitness center and a premium M Club lounge.

Franklin BSP Realty Trust originated a multimillion, two-year loan with three one-year extension options.

Built in 1988, the Hotel is Driftwood’s third acquisition in North Carolina and its second within the Research Triangle. Located at 4700 Guardian Drive, the Hotel is anchored by hundreds of surrounding companies and is near Tier-1 research universities.

Driftwood investment strategies include hospitality acquisition, development, and lending. Driftwood is developing the approximately $410 million Westin Cocoa Beach project in Cocoa Beach, FL.

Two big players in life sciences investing and development, Charlotte-based Trinity Capital Advisors and California-based Foundation Capital Ventures, are seeking to expand nationally and work together on projects.

Courtesy of Hanbury Architecture

A rendering of Spark LS, a $1B life sciences campus planned for the Research Triangle.

The partnership, known as Foundation, will be led by Trinity Managing Partners Denis Sullivan, Scott Altick, Walker Collier and Jeff Sheehan. Significant focus will be placed on recapitalizing existing assets, Sullivan said. Trinity was a significant buyer of defaulted loans during the Global Financial Crisis.

The two firms first collaborated on Park Point LP in Durham, North Carolina, and Spark LS, a $1B, 109-acre mixed-use life sciences campus in the Research Triangle Park region. Trinity had seen success in the RTP market, Sheehan said, and began looking for a partner to make a move to go national. 

Trinity boasts a 3M SF portfolio in the Research Triangle, including the 911K SF Southport Innovation Center in Morrisville, North Carolina, and the 265K SF Venable Center in downtown Durham.

Sheehan said he sees opportunity in utilizing the firms’ combined relationships with tenants. It would be an obvious move to help those doing research and development in the three biggest life sciences markets find space to commercialize and expand in North Carolina, taking advantage of the region’s biomanufacturing strength. 

“We’re also really excited about the amount of early stage research that is coming to North Carolina, acknowledging the skilled workforce that’s available,” said Sullivan, a former BioMed Realty chief investment officer.

But while there are opportunities in this environment, it is important to be selective.

“We think that going forward, you’re really going to have to be a stock picker, in terms of which projects you select,” Sullivan said. “And we really see a value in having a proven track record as an operator from both a tenant and a lender perspective.”

Developer KDC has announced a partnership with the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina to build one million square feet of office space in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.

The new office space will be located on 100 acres of land bound by 1-40 at Davis Drive, I-40 at Highway 54 and the Durham Freeway. As part of the new multi-use urban district, called Hub RTP, KDC will develop buildings totaling up to one million square feet, and up to 300 feet in height, which will be the first high-rise buildings within the Park.

Founded in 1959 in the center of three research universities, Research Triangle Park is the country’s largest innovation center, with global companies such as IBM, Cisco, Credit Suisse, BASF, GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo and RTI International among its more than 300 tenants.

“This is the long-anticipated opportunity to retool RTP. With the support of Durham County, the companies in RTP and private partners including KDC, we can do this in 2020,” said Scott Levitan CEO of the Research Triangle Foundation.

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