Rosenwald

The Challenge
The Rosenwald Building is a national historic building located on Central Avenue in Downtown Albuquerque that had been purchased by a local architectural firm. A principal of REA represented the firm in the acquisition of the building from Nations Bank. Upon acquisition the architectural firm moved into the vacancy on the ground floor and initiated a marketing plan through the REA Principal that brought the building to a 100% leased status within six months.

Over the next decade, the property outperformed the market and the partners' returns exceeded their expectations. However, the firm continued to grow and eventually occupied five different suites on three floors. This created efficiency issues within the firm's operations.

The Solution
The original partnership contracted with REA to develop a strategic occupancy study to determine whether their interest would be best served by either (1) repositioning the property to meet the firms' occupancy objectives or (2) sell the property and find an alternative location that better met their occupancy goals.

REA determined that it would require a substantial capital infusion to reposition the property to meet the firm's operational criteria, yet the firm would still be divided into three (3) separate suites on two (2) different floors, which was not the optimal situation for the Architectural Firm. However, the Downtown office market was approximately 30% vacant and their desired sales price could not be achieved unless the building was over 90% leased

A Principal of REA was taking a graduate level real estate development course at the University of New Mexico from Don Tishman, a well respected and acclaimed national real estate developer. The Principal of REA used the Rosenwald Building as his case study for the course. It was determined through the course that the highest and best use of the project would be a mixed use project. During the course, conceptual building plans, construction budgets and development proformas were completed for the building.

By having completed the market research and development underwriting, within three (3) months of the conclusion of the course and signing the listing agreement, REA was able to justify a property value that provided the architectural firm a sales price 35% greater than their desired goal. This sales price provided the partners with a 300% return on their original investment and a 900% return on their original cash investment.

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