CHICAGO, August 17, 2016 – Mesirow Financial announced that it successfully acquired the 51.2-acre, 1.15-million square-foot Verizon regional headquarters located in Irving, Texas, valued at $344 million. Verizon will lease back the full property for a 20-year term with options to extend.

Led by Senior Managing Directors Garry Cohen and Douglas Barker, Mesirow Financial’s Sale-Leaseback Capital group, along with its partner Kawa Capital, arranged for the purchase of the facility. The acquisition financing was structured in collaboration with Mesirow Financial’s Credit Tenant Lease (CTL) and Institutional Sales and Trading groups. Stephen Jacobson, senior managing director of Mesirow Financial’s CTL and Structured Debt Products group, noted that the CTL financing, together with last year’s Verizon operations center sale-leaseback, are among the largest non-government single asset credit tenant lease transactions ever consummated.

The Verizon team was led by John M. Vazquez, senior vice president and head of global real estate for Verizon. Cushman & Wakefield acted as real estate advisor for Verizon on the transaction led by executive vice president Robert Elms and executive director Jim Jordan.

“This transaction provides our company with immediate financial benefits and does so in a way that supports our continuing interests in the development of Las Colinas. The extension of our tenancy through a sale and restructured lease affirms the value we see of having located in such a dynamic area for so many years," said Verizon’s Vazquez.

Mesirow Financial’s Barker stated, “We are very excited to, again, partner with Verizon to help monetize a very strategic asset, this time in Irving, Texas. In the last year and a half, we have monetized nearly $1 billion and 2.55 million square feet of key real estate for Verizon across two transactions. Both transactions are evidence of the tremendous amount of cooperation between both organizations and the strength of the terrific long-term relationship we have developed with Verizon.”

“This transaction once again signifies the strong collaboration between our capital markets businesses. We continue to enhance our full-service platform in acquiring single-tenant properties on a national basis, complemented by our strong capabilities in mezzanine and senior debt placement,” said Richard Price, chairman and chief executive officer of Mesirow.