Challenge

Test positive Aware Network (TPAN) had outgrown its space in the Edgewater neighborhood, with no ability to expand in-place. There remained enough time on its lease to consider a wide range of  alternatives. The organization’s board of directors was intent on remaining close to its longtime home, a part of the city in which much of TPAN’s constituent-base lives. However, that part of the city had a very thin supply of appropriate commercial space.

Available office spaces of the size that TPAN needed were few and retail space, which in that part of the city was more plentiful, typically has a prohibitively high cost for an office use. The range of possibilities included adaptive reuse of an existing structure, likely including a zoning change, to entering into another lease. Out-of-the-ground construction seemed an unlikely solution.

Action

MAP Real Estate had been referred to TPAN by Better Existence with HIV, a sister organization that MAP had previously represented. MAP convened a meeting of top management staff and members of its board of directors to discuss TPAN’s agenda and its program of requirements, based on which MAP would undertake market research to identify the best alternatives. The board felt that the ideal solution would also permit a small third-party pharmacy to be co-located in the building to which TPAN would move.

The best alternatives included purchasing a multistory building with ample parking, a few blocks from TPAN’s current facility, affording the possibility of housing TPAN’s administrative staff and a pharmacy on the first floor, as well as eight residential units on the second and third floors. Other alternatives, which were for-lease, included a retail space that was acceptably priced and which had window-line and sidewalk entry from both Broadway and the street to its immediate west, as well as two office buildings in which TPAN could lease as much space as it needed. Preliminary drawings were developed for these alternatives, allowing for detailed analysis of their respective costs. 

MAP was directed by the board of directors to complete the transaction by negotiating an office lease at 5050 N. Broadway, a large office building that had been acquired by a prominent developer, along with a very large garage structure across the street. For purposes of obtaining the most favorable economics, it was useful that the redevelopment of this building had begun a short time before MAP engaged the owner in these negotiations.