All Forum Posts by: James Faulk

Hello - we own a 3.5 acre site that we are currently trying to develop. We've already negotiated a ground lease with a tenant for 1 acre of the land subject to DD/feasibility/permits etc which is expected to take 9 months to a year. 

We are trying to get the other 2.5 acres developed, either build to suit or ground lease. What I'd like to know is to see if anyone has any experience pre-leasing a site. What I don't want to have happen is to start planning and go through the permit process only to have a tenant/tenants change the entire plans and have to replan and reapply for permits.

With that in mind, I'd like to see if anyone has any experience/expertise in the pre-leasing process for retail tenants. Do you reach out to them with just the site/address or do you need permits in place for good/national tenants to take your site seriously.

Would appreciate any input.

Thanks!

@Joel Owens

Just as an update, we ended up negotiating an absolute net lease ground lease for about ~1 acre of our site to a corporate c-store/gas operator. We were very fortunate as a ground lease was our first choice.

We will have 1.3 acres remaining and are in contract to purchase the 1.2 acre lot, adjacent to our property. We will have 2.5 acres to potentially develop.

We are keen to develop the entire site but do not have the contacts/network to secure long term corporate tenants - either built to suit or ground lease. There was a relatively large local retail developer that is a preferred developer for another c-store/gas operator that wanted to buy our site so I'm considering reaching out to them for a fee development type of arrangement. These guys build retail centers with multiple corporates as tenants for each of their sites so I'm sure they had the idea of developing the site for their c-store/gas station client plus other tenants such as QSRs, banks, etc.

Would you happen to have any expertise in the fee development service or working with developers under similar arrangements?  

@Joel Owens - yes the property is zoned commercial already.

Hear you on your point about gas station being unprofitable but I would be banking on the corporates to already have done their DD on the site and determining that it is a prime/quality site.

If I'm not mistaken, these corporates don't select sites that aren't less than prime - am I correct here?

Thanks all for the input!

I am not entirely concerned about the development process. I have the resources and some experience with developing land. I was planning on building and operating a 1+ acre gas station with 8-10k of retail.

What I am unsure of however is whether the site is truly as prime as it would seem. I'm just seeing that these large corporates bidding on my site and going off of that...

Hello - I have on the market to sell a 2 acre corner vacant land the Seattle/Tacoma area. I'm a little hesitant to sell because we've gotten offers from the corporate department of large global gas/convenience store operators (all investment grade corporates) with plans of developing a gas station/convenience store + QSR and/or other retail. It's gotten to the point where there's a bidding war among these companies and our asking price is at a premium to other sites in the area. I would be less hesitant to sell if the Buyers were just mom and pop operators/franchisees.

My thinking now is that my site is almost certainly prime location however I had previously thought that my site was not all that great (traffic counts on that corner just north of 20k). Am I wrong? If all these large corporate are wanting to buy my site, shouldn't I just develop it myself?  Any thoughts and opinions here?