Cobblestone Office Park: Developers ready to launch office condo project

by Maria Hoover

Inside Business Editor

mhoover@sbj.net

Developers Greg Huntsman and Tim Pedigo are preparing for a January groundbreaking for the Cobblestone Office Park development, a project of their company, Glendale Office Park LLC.

The development is in the 2800 block of South Ingram Mill Road, next to Glendale High School. Plans are for six buildings ranging in size from 4,500 to 6,000 square feet on two separate pieces of land one on each side of the entrance into the property. One piece of land is 68,000 square feet; the other is 67,000 square feet, said Pedigo.

Glendale Office Park LLC paid an undisclosed price for the land to previous owner Larry Lipscomb, a real estate agent with Jim Hutcheson Realtors.

The purchase price for the condominiums starts at $129 per square foot, which includes a $20-per-square-foot infill allowance. For owners who want to hire their own contractors to do the infill, the price per square foot will be $109.

Huntsman and Pedigo are Realtors with Jim Hutcheson Realtors, and Pedigo also is the owner of Pedigo Construction, the general contractor for Cobblestone Office Park. Bates & Associates Architects is the architect and Great River Engineering is the civil engineer.

The project is to be built in phases, with the first building ready to move into by the third quarter of 2004.

While no marketing efforts for the property have yet been launched, Huntsman said there's already plenty of interest. He's talked with several businesses, including law firms, a real estate company and a dentist, about locating in Cobblestone Office Park. One of the challenges the developers face is getting business owners who are used to leasing space to embrace the option of owning their locations.

"Our target customer is small- to medium-(sized) businesses," Huntsman said. "It would be law firms, accounting firms, medical professionals closely held companies."

Research shows that office condominium ownership is very trendy in other markets, and Huntsman and Pedigo are optimistic that the location of Cobblestone Office Park will attract the desired tenants.

"We did some homework, and we looked at some other markets that are up-and-coming markets like Springfield, and we found that there's a demand for this type of office space in Springfield," Huntsman said. The reasons for this location begin with easy highway access to Battlefield, Sunshine, Highway 65 and James River Freeway, Huntsman said. "The other reason we like this location is that the surrounding area has a lot of professionals, a pretty good density of professionals, that would be our customers."

Based on their research, Huntsman and Pedigo feel that many of the business-owner tenants for Cobblestone Office Park could be found within five to 10 miles of the development, or they do business with people who live in that area.

"There's three or four banks in that area (and) a hotel, so if you owned a law firm and you wanted to bring people in, there's a hotel, there's a movie theater a big grocery store," Huntsman said.

Added Pedigo, "Even though it's not Battlefield, our tenants and business owners aren't going to want that. It's more for retail space." He noted that proximity to Glendale High School will be a key landmark for condominium owners when they tell clients where their offices are located.

The buildings can be divided into as many as four units each. Units can range in size from 1,125 square feet to 6,000 square feet. There will be a property owners' association at the site, Huntsman said.

"The real advantage to that is, by being an owner in this office park, (owners) won't have all the maintenance headaches, because the owners' association will take care of all the maintenance and (owners) will have a say in the association," he said.

Huntsman and Pedigo describe the development as providing a "garden office setting."

"Offices that are not quite a big stone building with not so much the corporate image, but more of a blend between a home office and an office," Huntsman said.

While the finishing touches are still being put on the exterior design of the buildings, Huntsman said the buildings will be "almost indistinguishable" from some of the homes in the area. As for the landscaping, there will be plenty of trees, and the developers are trying to incorporate some outdoor areas with benches into the layout.

While the developers intend to build the buildings and then sell them to tenants who can choose their own infill, they aren't completely ruling out other options.

"If you came to us and said, I want to buy the pad site and build my own building,' we are going to have some governance over the appearance of the building and the architecture style, but that's not out of the question," Huntsman said, adding that lease-purchases or leases also are possibilities. At this point, Huntsman said, there's not a separate fee schedule for leasing or other options.

"The demand is really the result of the stock market, and it's really kind of an equity vehicle for a lot of businesses. If it's good to own your home, it's going to be good to own your office, and a lot of people are looking for secure places for investment," Huntsman said.

He added that while other office condominium developments might boast more square footage, Cobblestone Office Park is staying smaller for a purpose.

The size will keep smaller tenants from getting lost, Pedigo said, and it also will allow an owner to buy an entire building and lease out the space until their own business grows into it.

"It does give them an option to plan for growth," Huntsman said.