Victor Coleman
Analyst · Wells Fargo
Thank you, Kay, and welcome, everyone, to our First Quarter 2014 Conference Call. The first quarter was another great productive period for Hudson. Key highlights in the quarter included 2 important acquisitions in the Pacific Northwest and Southern California, and we also completed a very successful common stock offering to help finance these acquisitions and support our growth objectives in 2014.
On the acquisition front, I'm especially pleased with the latest addition to our expanded footprint in the Pacific Northwest. During the first quarter, we closed previously announced acquisition of the office and retail property known as Merrill Place located in Seattle's Pioneer Square, directly adjacent to our First & King property. We acquired this asset in an off-market transaction for a gross purchase price of approximately $57.7 million. Merrill Place consists of 4 interconnected brick-and-beam buildings spanning an entire city block and comprised of approximately 180,000 square feet of office and ground floor retail, along with 147-stall standalone parking structure.
At the end of the first quarter, Merrill Place was 93% leased with approximately 58% of those leases scheduled to expire over the next 4 years. Importantly, we believe that the in-place rents are more than 20% below current market levels.
Looking ahead, we plan to implement an extensive repositioning of this property, including lobby and common area upgrades, new tenant amenities, an elevator mod and mechanical and electrical upgrades. Additionally, current zoning for the property allows for the potential development of a new office building fronting the soon-to-be approved Alaskan Way waterfront, which the company estimates at approximately 140,000 square feet to the project. The entitlement process for this project is currently underway with the goal of delivering a new office building by 2017.
As a complement to our growing portfolio of highly sought after creative office space in Southern California, in the first quarter, we completed the acquisition of 3402 Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica. 3402 Pico consists of 3 contiguous parcels, comprising nearly 3 acres. We estimate the site can support approximately 150,000 square feet of created office space, including the complete refurbishment of an existing 40,000 square-foot vacant office building.
With the future Expo Light Rail stop at the Olympic and Bundy station within walking distance, close proximity to other major transportation thoroughfares, excellent visibility and opportunity to deliver an abundant number of outdoor activities, 3402 is ideally suited for creative office users looking to be located in this highly supply-constrained market.
Similar to our successful redevelopments of Element LA and 3401, our goal is to fruitfully redevelop this property into a state-of-the-art creative office campus.
To fund these acquisitions and further support our growth objectives, in January, we completed the public offering of 9.5 million shares of common stock generating net proceeds of approximately $195 million. This successful offering included the full exercise of the underwriters’ over-allotment option, and we're very pleased with the high level of investor interest in the offering and appreciate the continued support for our growth strategy.
First quarter leasing remained very active with the completion of new and renewal leases. Shortly following the end of the quarter, we signed a new lease at 1455 Market Street property in San Francisco with Rocket Fuel, Inc., a leading provider of artificial intelligence advertising solutions for digital marketers. This new long-term lease encompasses 24,438 square feet of initial occupancy and included an expansion for an additional 24,438 square feet for a combined 48,876 square feet of occupancy. The initial 24,000 square feet of occupancy fills a vacant floor commencing during the third quarter of '14. An additional 24,000 feet is expected to backfill another full floor subject to the early termination of a lease that is expected to expire in the first quarter of '15. And starting rents exceeding our underwritten and existing rents for the backfill space, this lease delivers excellent value to our shareholders.
In terms of leasing trends, the fundamentals remained strong in each of our core markets. Looking first at San Francisco, demand remained at healthy levels during the first quarter. Market-wide vacancy continued to decline, ending the first quarter at 7.2%. This represents a 40-basis-point decline from last quarter and a year-over-year decline of 150 basis points.
Among the submarkets with the biggest drops in vacancy was the South of Market, where Hudson has an extremely strong presence, with the vacancy dropping 200 basis points from the end of 2013 and now standing at nearly 5%.
Market-wide asking rates rose to $56.62, an increase of 2.2% from last quarter and 11.4% from last year. With sustained tenant demand and falling vacancy rates, we believe there will continue to be pressure on available space and the rental rates in the years ahead.
Furthermore, construction completions are not anticipated to alleviate this issue. With preleasing on 3.7 million feet of new construction scheduled to delivery this year and next approaching 9%, new supply is not likely to present a constraint to steady increases in asking rents for the foreseeable future.
Now in Los Angeles, on the heels of 2013 slow to steady growth, the Greater L.A. office market continued to strengthen throughout the first quarter of '14. Class-A asking rates increased to $2.84 from $2.78 per square foot at the end of '13. And overall Class-A vacancy for the Greater Los Angeles region remained steady at 15.7%.
West Los Angeles and the Hollywood Wilshire Corridor, 2 of our core submarkets in the region, continue to lead the overall trend. Across the West Los Angeles marketplace, asking rents increased 3.9% from the end of '13 and were up 9.3% year-over-year. The West Los Angeles submarket had vacancy of 11.7% at the end of the quarter, with deal activity in Western L.A. accounting for nearly 1/2 of the region's net absorption in the quarter. Obviously, we think this bodes well for our portfolio at Hudson.
Turning to Seattle, the region's commercial real estate market kicked off 2014 on a positive note. Total vacancy declined for the third straight quarter, improving 50 basis points to 14.6% at the end of first quarter. And much of this improvement can be attributed to the new tenants in the market and the new expansion of upcoming software and tech firms. Furthermore, Class-A average asking lease rates increased 1.2% at the end of '13 and finished the first quarter at $29.61 per foot full-service. Of the other major markets, Downtown Seattle, where we have majority of our portfolio in the region, remained the leader for Class-A asking rates at $33.95 per foot, a 1.3% increase from last quarter. And in addition, with current vacancy of only 12.8%, Downtown Seattle has accounted for more than 75% of the region's net absorption during the last 4 quarters, and it significantly outperformed the region as a whole.
Before I turn the call over to Mark, allow me to touch on some recent coverage of our latest development activities to expand the Sunset Bronson Studios with a property we're calling Icon, a 14-story, 315,000 square-foot multi-dimensional hi-tech creative office building. Icon is the centerpiece of approximately $150 million development that includes a 5-story, 90,000 square-foot production building and 1,635 space parking structure. The Icon project will meet the changing needs of leading entertainment companies in the digital age to accommodate related businesses to want to relocate by providing state-of-the-art office and production buildings designed as a flexible, creative workspaces.
The project is being designed with large 25,000 square-foot floors, with enhanced ceiling heights that can be configured for a host of work environments, sought by creative companies. With the expansion, tenants will enjoy the exceptional opportunities that are located within the campus that offers state-of-the-art office, center stage and other production related facilities. Our leasing team is currently in proposals with several tenants with large space requirements, and the construction is expected to commence towards the end of the year with the delivery anticipated in the fourth quarter of '16. We're very pleased with the progress we've made to date, and we'll keep you informed of the milestones this project as it goes forward.
And now I'm going to turn the call over to Mark, our CFO.