TechPoint Foundation for Youth is pleased to announce that Ambrose Property Group has joined the Partners in Progress corporate sponsorship program at the Gigabyte Level.  The commercial real estate firm will donate 10% of any commission they receive from transactions involving the employers of TechPoint Foundation for Youth board members, volunteers, or other Partners in Progress.

“For the past few years, I have been mentoring students at TechPoint Foundation for Youth’s Greenhouse Initiative, New Tech High @ Arsenal Tech,” said Ambrose President Aasif Bade. “Now we are taking our dedication to underserved youth to the next level by investing in a Foundation we feel is making a real impact and enticing other companies to do the same.” read more…

While February is always the slowest month of the year for commercial real estate investment sales, activity last month dropped off sharply from sales volume in January — but more importantly sales volume also declined from a year ago….

In interviews, CRE analyst, brokers and investors attribute the February lull as the result of two major factors: a disconnect in pricing expectations between buyers and sellers that has grown wider apart in recent months, and a shift in investment activity to secondary market….

“As property owners continue to erase 2006 from their memories and companies move past tire-kicking in search of sweetheart deals, we expect transactions to come to fruition more frequently,” Bade said Read this article at CoStar’s website

Two local real estate firms are working on plans to convert a 10-story downtown office building along North Pennsylvania Street into market-rate apartments.

The Whitsett Group and Ambrose Property Group bought the American Building, a limestone structure built in 1929, from the parent company of The Indianapolis Star in a deal that closed in February.

They expect to spend $7 million to $10 million to retrofit the building at 333 N. Pennsylvania St. Read this article at Indiana Business Journal

A. Arnold World Class Relocation signed a 38,400-square-foot lease at 8145-8199 Zionsville Rd. in Indianapolis.

The single-story, 89,600-square-foot Building 49 industrial property was built in 1982 in the Park 100 Industrial submarket.

Aasif Bade and Patrick Chittenden with Ambrose Property Group represented the tenant. Mark Hosfeld and Kate Willen with Duke Realty represented the landlord in-house.

Read this article at CoStar’s website

A real estate firm founded at the dawn of the Great Recession hoping to break into commercial development has landed its first project: a $4 million office building it will lease to the federal government.

Ambrose Property Group broke ground last month on a 13,000-square-foot building at Intech Park on the northwest side that will house about 75 Social Security Administration employees who are moving from leased space in the Lafayette Square Mall area.

The Social Security office could be the first of many projects Ambrose develops for the government’s General Services Administration. The firm is in various stages of bidding for 15 other government projects as close as Kentucky and Ohio and as far away as Texas and New York, said Patrick M. Chittenden, a vice president at Ambrose who is also one of its founders. read more…

Read this article at Indiana Business Journal

Ambrose Property Group has broken ground on a 13,000 square foot office building fully leased to the United States Government. Ambrose is the developer, owner, and ongoing property management provider. The $4 Million development project will pursue Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for New Construction by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), making it one of the first office buildings seeking that level of certification for sustainable building in Central Indiana. Project completion and occupancy is planned for December 2011.

About Ambrose Property Group: Ambrose Property Group (www.ambrosepg.com) was founded in 2008 in Indianapolis, IN with a focus on integrity, optimism, creativity, and a customer-centric approach. Ambrose provides commercial real estate development, brokerage, construction and property management services. Ambrose’s leadership team has completed $300 million of leasing transactions, $250 Million of development and has $500 Million of property management experience.

Read this article at Inside Indiana Business

The Whitsett Group LLC is planning to expand its portfolio of affordable and mixed-income housing with an 86-unit development at 1010 Central Ave.

The $7.2 million project, to be financed with affordable-housing tax credits, involves retrofitting the three-story former Central Restaurant Products building to accommodate 50 one- and two-bedroom apartments. A loading dock that projects from the north side of the building would be razed and replaced with a four-story structure housing 36 one- and two-bedroom units.

Because the property is in the St. Joseph historic district, plans must be approved by the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission. IHPC is scheduled to hear the proposal at its March 2 meeting.

Whitsett Group will find out Feb. 24 if the state will award tax credits for the project. It needs that approval and IHPC’s nod before closing on the purchase of the building, which is owned by ADLI Development and was listed most recently with Ambrose Property Group for $2.4 million. The 68,000-square-foot building had also been offered for lease.

ADLI is owned by Rick Weinstein, who once owned Central Restaurant Products, a wholesaler that moved to Georgetown Road in 2005 and was sold in 2009.

Whitsett principal Joe Whitsett said he hopes to close on the purchase of the building in early June and start construction in time for a June 2012 opening.

To qualify for the tax credits, the majority of units in the building must be priced for renters who qualify for affordable housing. Those units—68 spread between both buildings—would be priced at between $375 and $750 a month. The remaining 18 units would rent for between $950 and $1,200 a month.

Whitsett said all of the market-rate units would be in the existing building, which opened in 1900 and for decades was a clothing factory. “It has great architecture,” including large, exposed beams and high ceilings, said Whitsett.

Whitsett Group has been a prolific developer and acquirer of affordable housing since its founding in 2007. It owns or manages 336 mostly one- and two-bedroom units in seven developments in Indianapolis, Lafayette and Michigan City, according to its website. The majority of units—212—are in Indianapolis. It has another 283 units under construction, 216 of which are here.

The Central Avenue project would add to that total and give Whitsett a larger presence in the downtown neighborhood it has operated in since December 2009. That’s when the company bought the troubled 707 E. North Street building, which was under construction and slated to house around 20 condos priced in the million-dollar range. Whitsett bought the building out of foreclosure and converted it into 40 apartments, some of which rent for market rates. The firm’s offices are on the top floor of the building.

Apartments in the 707 building are fully leased. Whitsett said 1010 Central would target the same demographic—primarily downtown workers.

“The downtown rental market is very strong,” said Whitsett. He said the building on Central is in a prime location because it is adjacent to the historic, residential neighborhoods of St. Joe and Chatham Arch and close to Massachusetts Avenue.

The architect for the project is Mark Smith of MAS Architects.

Read this article at Indiana Business Journal

Brenwick Development has turned over commercial sales and leasing responsibilities for its signature development, The Village of West Clay, to an outside firm.

Ambrose Property Group, a commercial leasing and development company headed by former Duke Realty Corp. broker Aasif Bade, took over for Brenwick, which is primarily a residential developer, at the beginning of the year.

“We’re going to aggressively find ways to get deals done in 2011 both on the retail and office side,” Bade said.

Village of West Clay covers 680 acres at 131st Street and Towne Road in Hamilton County. It’s primarily a residential development, but it has two big commercial nodes: Uptown at 131st and Towne and Village Centre Shoppes in the development’s interior. Between the two, there is the potential for about 275,000 square feet of commercial development. Of that total, about 175,000 square feet remains to be developed.

Eleven of 14 building sites are still available in Uptown, which so far is home to a CVS drugstore and branches of Chase Bank and the National Bank of Indianapolis. The Village Centre has the potential for approximately 20 more sites. So far, it’s a mix of single-tenant and multi-tenant retail and office buildings.

Bade said his firm’s goal is to have the entire project fully developed in three to five years. Part of the sales pitch is that building sites in the development are pre-zoned, he said. The Uptown section, for example, could accommodate a 50,000-square-foot retailer without the zoning battles often associated with suburban commercial development.

Bade’s firm, founded in November 2008, has grown from three employees in August 2009 to seven today.

“This is significant for us,” Bade said, “because it gives us an opportunity to do development work there.” The firm, founded just as commercial real estate took a dive, hasn’t done any development yet but expects to announce a project in the next month of so.

Development of the Village of West Clay started in 1999, and about 80 percent of the residential component is sold out.

“We had considered the commercial in here something that was going to be hard to do until the latter part of the project,” said Brenwick President George Sweet. As residential development winds down and the population of western Clay Township ticks up, the time was right to bring in a firm whose expertise is in commercial real estate, Sweet said.

Brenwick has about 200 lots to sell out of a total of 1,700 residential units in the development. The larger number includes some multi-family units.

Last summer, the company sold 76 lots to Pulte Homes, which builds in a variety of price ranges. Some residents of Village of West Clay, which is known for its high-end, custom homes, objected, fearing that houses Pulte built wouldn’t measure up.

Sweet noted that Pulte had already built houses in the development and that anything the company builds has to meet strict design standards that apply to all development in Village of West Clay.

Read this article at Indiana Business Journal

The commercial real estate slump is prompting several Indianapolis brokerages to add property-management services to their portfolios or bolster existing ones.

Rising vacancy rates are driving the trend. Overall office vacancy in the metro area rose to 20.6 percent at the close of 2009, up from 18 percent the year before. The retail market fared nearly as poorly.

More tenant vacancies increase the chance of foreclosure, causing lenders to grudgingly assume ownership of properties that need management services until buyers are found.

Brokerages increasingly are seeking those property management opportunities to supplement a loss of leasing activity, though they admit the work is less lucrative than tenant representation.

And some management opportunities are coming from cash-strapped developers looking to save money by consolidating brokerage and property-management services with one firm rather than contracting them separately.

Jeff Henry, managing principal of the local office of St. Louis-based Colliers Turley Martin Tucker, Indianapolis’ largest commercial brokerage, is noticing the trend.

“We’re seeing people who wouldn’t normally be in that business, get in that business,” he said. “But that’s not unusual in tough economic times when companies are looking at other income avenues.”

One brokerage that’s branching out is Resource Commercial Real Estate. The Indianapolis-based firm, founded in 2005, launched its property-management division just last fall and has recruited a couple of industry insiders to lead it.

Jim Logan, president of Resource’s property management group, previously held executive positions at local developers REI Investments Inc. and Browning Investments Inc.

He’s joined by Dave Ciechanowicz, whose experience includes stops at Lauth, another developer, and at brokerages CB Richard Ellis and Sitehawk Retail Real Estate.

Resource Principal Tom Osborne said the firm so far is managing one property that he declined to name because a court still is untangling receivership details.

“Lenders don’t want to own or control properties,” he said. “But when they do, they’re looking for someone to get in there and help them.”

Resource is in discussions to manage a few other large buildings, with a goal of having 1 million square feet of space under management within the next year.

Logan, a 25-year veteran of the property-management business, said the challenge of leading Resource’s upstart division attracted him to the company.

A wealth of competition shouldn’t disappoint.

Checking the pipes

Count Ambrose Property Group, a local developer and broker, among the new entries to the property management field. Firm partners Aasif Bade and Pat Chittenden launched Ambrose in 2008, and the property management division only a few months ago.

Bade is a former executive at Indianapolis developer Duke Realty Co., while Chittenden cut his teeth in the construction industry.

“There are a lot of distressed properties that we’re trying to get our hands on,” Chittenden said. One they bought is a multitenant building in Richmond that they also manage.

Ambrose manages two other properties, including an office building at East 96th Street and Gray Road.

The pair recruited Phil Armstrong, another former Duke manager. He oversaw management of nearly 1 million square feet of office space at Keystone at the Crossing, as well as more than 1.5 million square feet of industrial property at Park 100 on the northwest side.

Chittenden acknowledged the firm has struggled a bit to secure property-management deals with other building owners, but the partners remain upbeat.

“We’re more than willing to go to a building once or twice a week just to make sure the pipes don’t burst,” he said.

A key challenge the upstart divisions face is competition from larger brokers and developers with well-established property-management services.

The local office of Colliers Turley has 30.5 million square feet of space under management, according to statistics provided to IBJ. Duke trails just behind with 29.8 million square feet.

Financial services key

Not far behind the two behemoths is NAI Olympia Partners. The local broker offered property-management services until about seven years ago when the executive in charge, Bill Stoops, joined Veritas Realty LLC and took the work with him.

Olympia re-entered the property-management business about three years ago when a group of investors bought the Disciples of Christ building at 131 E. Washington St. and turned management responsibilities over to Olympia.

The building now is nearly fully occupied, as the rate has climbed about a third, said Olympia principal Gus Miller. He attributed the firm’s hands-on management of the structure to the leasing success.

“The critical element is the property manager,” he said. “That’s who takes care of the tenant.”

Olympia since has grown the division and is managing more than 20 properties, including the Indiana State Teachers Association building on West Market Street downtown.

The growth led Olympia to add Ken Petruska and Audrey Lawson to buttress its property-management division.

Petruska arrived in early January from local developer Kite Realty Group Trust, where he managed a portfolio of 8 million square feet nationally.

Olympia’s leasing of 30 South Meridian, which Kite managed, impressed Petruska enough to make the leap, he said.

Lawson arrived in spring of 2009 and brought critical accounting and finance experience from Lauth and Colliers, as well as from the former Backer & Backer PC real estate boutique.

To be sure, property managers provide more than simply ensuring the grass gets mowed and the garbage collected. A large part of the job involves financial obligations, such as providing monthly reports on building assets, tracking insurance costs and even appealing property tax bills.

Danny Marr, a Veritas co-founder, said, “It’s not at all glamorous. It’s rolling up the shirt sleeves.”

‘Hard to justify’

Marr should know. He launched Olympia Partners in 1990 and helped start Veritas in 2003, at which time Stoops from Olympia joined him to lead Veritas’ property-management efforts.

Veritas manages 41 properties and 3.2 million square feet in seven states. The firm’s portfolio is retail driven and includes Markland Mall in Kokomo and Fair Oaks Mall in Columbus, as well as Chapel Hill Shopping Center at 10th Street and Girls School Road.

Marr described the growth of the firm’s property-management division as “slow but steady.” Yet, its property-management work last year outpaced leasing activity, due to the soft commercial real estate market, Marr said.

Veritas employs a certified public accountant, property managers, maintenance technicians and support personnel.

That investment in employees is a big reason why property management seldom becomes hugely profitable, he said.

“If you don’t have a couple million square feet under management,” Marr said, “it’s hard to justify.”

Read this article at Indiana Business Journal

Life After Duke Realty – The Indianapolis Business Journal features Ambrose President, Aasif Bade. The piece compliments his entrepreneurial spirit and profiles the triumphs and despair of launching a real estate firm in the worst economy since the Great Depression.

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