San Francisco, CA (December, 2014) – Newcastle Partners, a San Francisco-based real estate investment and development company, completed an aggressive amount of activity in 2014. By year- end the firm will have acquired, developed or sold 3.9 million square feet of industrial and office property throughout Southern California, San Francisco Bay Area, and Portland. This activity is more than double the firm’s 2013 activity.

“What’s been exciting about the breadth of our activity this year is that we’ve been aggressively building and buying in two of the most economically active markets in the country,” said Dennis Higgs, Founder and Managing Partner with Newcastle Partners. “The white-hot, tech-based office markets of the San Francisco Bay Area and Pacific Northwest; as well as the equally hot industrial markets of the Los Angeles Basin and the Inland Empire.”

Higgs also added that the firm has been prudently selling in each market as circumstances dictate, noting: “You take what the market gives you.”
According to Higgs the firm has goals of acquiring between $200 million and $250 million in office and industrial property in 2015 as well as developing 2.5 to 3 million square feet of industrial property in both the Inland Empire and the Bay Area.

Some of the firm’s notable activity in San Francisco and the Inland Empire in 2014 include:

• In November 2014, Newcastle completed the $43.5 million sale of a speculative 600,000-square- foot industrial property on 26.95 acres in Riverside, Calif. to China-based buyer, Scuderia Development. Newcastle Partners completed construction of the property in early 2014.
• In May 2014, Newcastle sold a five-story, 70,000-square-foot office building located at 246 First Street in San Francisco. The property is adjacent to the Transbay Terminal and is located at ground zero for the rapidly growing South of Market office market. The property was sold to CIM Group Acquisitions for $39 million.
• In October 2014, the firm sold a 90,250-square-foot speculative industrial property for $8.3 million to Peter Lin, an owner/user importing flags from all over the world.
• In April, Newcastle acquired 25.74 acres of land in the Inland Empire and will start construction on a new, 510,000-square-foot speculative development.

About Newcastle Partners: Newcastle Partners is a privately held, full service, commercial real estate investment and development company focusing exclusively in West Coast gateway marketplaces. The company is vertically integrated and uniquely positioned to execute a variety of strategies to add value, including land entitlement, new construction, and asset repositioning to create and capture incremental value. Founded in 1999, the firm has established itself as an experienced investor/developer with superior risk-adjusted returns on behalf of a deep list of institutional and private investors. Newcastle has completed the acquisition and/or development of a diversified portfolio of over 50 projects totaling over 15,000,000 square feet, representing a total investment of over $1.1 B.