Childress Klein, Ascentris refinance Charlotte office pair with $68.3M life company loan

Childress Klein Properties and Ascentris Real Estate have refinanced The Nexus and Hub at Waverly, two Class A office buildings in south Charlotte totaling 312,738 square feet, for $68.3 million. CBRE's Nate Sittema and Will Chapman arranged the five-year permanent loan on the borrowers' behalf, and the money came from a life insurance company the coverage does not name.

The buildings sit at 6325 and 6210 Ardrey Kell Road, six stories each, with The Nexus at 157,383 square feet and the Hub at 155,355, completed in 2017 and 2019. Against that collateral the loan works out to roughly $218 a square foot, a debt basis rather than a price, since no sale price, appraisal or cap rate appears in the coverage; the only number on the table describes what a lender would advance, not what the buildings are worth.

For a sector that has been clearing asset by asset at occupied-square-foot values, the structure is the news: a five-year permanent loan from an insurer is the long-duration capital carrying the refinancing wall, extensions and recapitalizations in place of forced sales, with banks ceding the senior position to life companies and other long-duration lenders. The coverage leaves out everything underneath the term — no interest rate, no proceeds, no loan-to-value, no identity for the insurer — so the sponsors' equity position in the two buildings cannot be read from outside.

Waverly supplies the argument for that comfort. The 90-acre development holds 250,000 square feet of retail anchored by Whole Foods Market, more than 40 restaurants, shops and fitness and wellness offerings, a 140-room Hilton Garden Inn & Conference Center, the 375-unit Lantower Waverly apartment community and 140 single-family homes and townhomes. Office space inside that mix draws on a tenant amenity base and a daytime population that a standalone suburban building lacks, and that difference is what a permanent lender is buying. When Trademark broke ground on a Whole Foods-anchored center in September, this publication noted a grocery anchor does underwriting work a loan amount otherwise would; here the anchor is doing it for the office next door.

Two six-story buildings inside a grocery-anchored development sit nowhere near the commodity end of the office market, and a refinancing adds no new price point to a sector still clearing asset by asset. This deal marks where permanent debt is still being written on suburban office in the Southeast, and at what term: five years from an insurer against $218 a square foot of loan proceeds. Whether that loan basis was conservative or generous is a question only a sale can answer, and the coverage describes none.