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Jackson secures new Waterfront lease, brings park to 97 percent full

August 28, 2009

Wichita Business Journal
by Chris Moon

Wichita developer Paul Jackson has solidified leasing at his 102,800-square-foot Lakeside at the Waterfront development, bringing his most recent building to full occupancy.

Littleton, Colo.-based Avtrak LLC will move its Wichita office into 4,124 square feet in the Kennedy and Coe building, completed last year. The aviation maintenance tracking company will leave a sublease at the Terra Cotta building at 29th Street North and Rock Road.

The lease brings the Kennedy and Coe building to 100 percent occupancy, and Jackson’s three Waterfront buildings to 97 percent leased.

“Timing is everything, right?” Jackson says of the local office market that has been soft during the past year. “Our timing is somewhat fortunate. We got started on the park before the economy took a hit.”

Jackson had his major leases in place by last October when commercial brokers started to feel a slowdown in the market. His first two buildings were nearly full, and he’d secured commitments by Kennedy and Coe for 32,000 square feet and law firm Kutak Rock LLP for 8,000 square feet.

Getting that last lease in place, however, required creativity, he says. Jackson won’t disclose rates for specific tenants.

“We’re not immune to the market,” he says. “The leasing market is soft. We’ve had to adjust our proposals to be competitive.”

Lease rates in the Kennedy and Coe building ranges from $21 to $24 per square foot, among the highest in the city. Rates at the balance of the development are in the low to mid $20s, Jackson says.

Rates Holding Steady

J.P. Weigand & Sons Inc.’s Bradley Tidemann, who brokered the Avtrak lease, says Lakeside’s high occupancy is a testament to the mixed-use Waterfront development.

“People want to retain and attract good employees. People in those types of positions want to have shopping and restaurants and those venues to go to, (and) door-side parking. That’s why that suburban office park is so successful,” he says.

Gary Oborny, president of Occidental Management, which is trying to lease up its 80,000-square-foot Northrock offices, says rates are holding steady for Class A office space on the east side. In many cases, landlords don’t have flexibility because of terms with the banks that financed their buildings.

Rates at Northrock can go as low as $19.50. The building is 55 percent full.

Prospective tenants have been making themselves better known during the past 60 days, Oborny says. Some companies haven’t been heavily affected by the recession. But he stopped short of saying the market was robust.

“I don’t want to paint too much of a rosy picture. It’s better than it was,” he says. “It was bleak over the winter.”

A Growing Aviation Firm

At Avtrak, the move to the Waterfront freed the company from a 1,600-square-foot space it had occupied the past five years at 29th and Rock. The company had been subleasing from law firm Triplett, Woolf & Garretson LLC.

Avtrak monitors business jet flight time for its customers to ensure they are following proper maintenance schedules. President Glenn Hertzler says the 14-year-old firm hopes to double its 11-person Wichita staff. It also has offices in Colorado and Massachusetts.

“I know that aviation is really tough. I don’t know there’s another location in the economy hit worse than Wichita with all the big manufacturing firms there. Fortunately, we’re a bright spot,” Hertzler says.

He says the company, in part, has benefited by Cessna Aircraft Co.’s decision earlier this year to sell off its own aviation maintenance tracking firm.

“We’ve been pretty successful in reaching out to the Cessna Citation operators and showing them what we do,” Hertzler says.

He called Waterfront one of “the nicest work environments in Wichita.”


cmoon@bizjournals.com | 266-6176

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