Investicore buys Ares' Charlotte park on a lease-up basis

Investicore Holdings bought ThExchange out of Ares' hands for $64 million, taking a 14-building, 568,811-square-foot Charlotte office complex that was listed for sale in April and, per Charlotte Business Journal, is 60% occupied with one building sitting entirely empty. The 42-acre park reached Ares in 2024, when The Dilweg Cos. turned the property over after its $68.6 million loan matured and became nonperforming. Across the full 568,811 square feet, $64 million works out to about $113 a foot; against only the space that pays rent, it is closer to $188. That gap is the deal.

The leasing plan carries everything else. John Vickers of KW Commercial brokered the acquisition for Investicore, and the KW Commercial team he leads will handle leasing at the park, while Matt Smith and Patrick Gildea of CBRE brokered it for Ares. Investicore also plans to convert part of one building into food-and-beverage space, an amenity bet on tenants the park has not signed. Fourteen buildings at 60% occupancy do not reprice on the strength of a coffee bar; they reprice one lease at a time, which is why the hardest part of the plan sits in the same hands that sourced the buy.

Dilweg spent about $34 million and two years renovating the park, finishing in 2020, and that is the uncomfortable part for anyone who owns Charlotte office: the renovated product, six years old and 40% empty, cleared at roughly $113 a foot. Office has found a clearing mechanism only where a trade prints, and the mechanism runs through vacancy: the headline price is not the comp, the per-occupied-foot price is, and the difference between the two is what a buyer gets paid to take lease-up risk. ThExchange has now put a number on that spread.

Ares' exit reads as a debt resolution rather than a retreat from real estate, and our records show a $510 million fund launch at the end of August behind it. The harder question the trade leaves is whether a renovated, 60%-leased, 14-building park, where occupancy rather than renovation is the entire investment case, is a lease-up any institutional holder wants to fund. Dilweg already spent the renovation dollars, and the buyer here is paying for the rent roll instead.

Watch the empty building. A signed tenant turns the $113-a-foot basis into a discount; another year of vacancy makes it the ceiling, for ThExchange and for every Charlotte landlord who now has to comp against this sale.