Corporate Office Properties Trust, a Columbia-based REIT, has been so successful buying, building and leasing office buildings for defense agencies and contractors that it is following those opportunities beyond the Baltimore-Washington corridor and out of the state.
COPT CEO Rand Griffin calls the strategy “tenant-centric expansion.”
Last year, the firm bought two buildings in San Antonio holding defense contractors, and it anticipates that purchase will be the basis for the largest office park in the Texas city.
In Colorado Springs, Colo., at the base of Pike?s Peak, COPT acquired five buildings and 184 acres near Peterson Air Force Base, home of the Air Force Space Command and the North American Air Defense Command.
“Most of our top tenants were there,” Griffin said.
The company is building one building there, has a second in development and can build as much as 1.5 million square feet of space.
Griffin said the company still plans on acquiring more than $300 million worth of existing properties this year, focusing “very strategically” on Columbia Gateway; the I-270 corridor; and Frederick County, near Fort Detrick, the biodefense research facility, where “a lot of defense contractors are finding themselves squeezed out,” Griffin said.
After making some acquisition in Northern Virginia, the company is now “on the sidelines” there due to high prices, Griffin said. “It?s a very tough environment out there. We will just not go above replacement costs” in bidding for existing buildings.
Key to the company?s focus on leasing more space to current tenants is keeping those tenants happy. In 2005, COPT won the national customer satisfaction award from CEL & Associates, a Los Angeles real estate consulting firm that surveys thousands of office tenants.
