BY PERRY BROTHERS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Dayton's Miller-Valentine Group and GE Capital Real Estate will jointly develop as many as four suburban office buildings in the Tristate.
The first two projects, with a combined 150,000 square feet of space, will cost a total of $16 million.
The venture gives privately held Miller-Valentine increased financial support and provides GE Capital Real Estate an opportunity to capitalize on the development firm's presence in the Tristate.
"To compete with the public companies, private developers are going to have a couple of choices to make," said Jack Goodwin, a Miller-Valentine partner. "They can be bought by the public companies, align themselves strategically with one, or they can form individual partnerships that give them the capital."
Groundbreaking on the first of the four projects is expected this month. It will be built in Sharonville at Miller-Valentine's Crowne Point Plaza.
Three Crowne Point will be a three-story, 75,000-square-foot building. It will cost about $8 million to build and is expected to be completed in February 1999. No tenants have been signed.
The second project, One Waterstone Office Building, will be built in Deerfield Township. It, too, will cost about $8 million and contain about 75,000-square feet.
The companies will later unveil plans for two more office buildings, which will bring to about $30 million the amount of financing GE Capital will extend under the venture.
"The Midwest . . . is a market we have focused more attention on," said Christopher Overberg, vice president and district manager of GE Capital Real Estate. "Just this year we have started to do more in Cincinnati."
Mr. Overberg said the company chose Cincinnati over Columbus for an office two years ago because the state capital's market was overheating.
Interest in Three Crowne Point has been high, Mr. Goodwin said. "We're working with a number of different prospects, some of them from our other buildings and some of them new," he said. "We have enough leads, if we signed 75 percent of them, to lease half of the building up."
The market around Sharonville is hot, according to Cincinnati Commercial Realtors, the firm marketing the projects. In the first quarter, the Tri-County market had a 3 percent vacancy rate for Class A, or premium, office space.
