BITCO Insurance Companies headquarters in Davenport has been acquired by Baltimore-based Sentinel Net Lease. CREDIT SENTINEL NET LEASE
The seven-year-old Davenport office building occupied by BITCO Insurance Companies has been sold to Sentinel Net Lease, a national real estate investment firm that will lease to the Quad Cities company. In a news release Monday, Sept. 18, the Baltimore, Maryland-based Sentinel announced it has acquired the 42,676-square-foot, Class A office building in a $13.3 […]
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The seven-year-old Davenport office building occupied by BITCO Insurance Companies has been sold to Sentinel Net Lease, a national real estate investment firm that will lease to the Quad Cities company. In a news release Monday, Sept. 18, the Baltimore, Maryland-based Sentinel announced it has acquired the 42,676-square-foot, Class A office building in a $13.3 million deal. The building, located at 3700 Market Circle, is 100% leased and occupied by BITCO. Other details of the transaction were not released. “This acquisition was a unique opportunity where we were able to acquire a newly constructed property tenanted by an institutional tenant with a long-term lease and assume existing debt with favorable terms at a price per square foot below replacement costs,” Sentinel Chief Investment Officer Dennis Cisterna said in the release. “The property’s location in the Quad Cities aligns with our focus on acquiring superior properties with quality tenants and long-term cash flow in desirable suburban markets.” BITCO, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Old Republic International Corp., relocated in 2016 to the new Davenport building from its longtime headquarters in downtown Rock Island. Old Republic is one of the nation’s 50 largest shareholder-owned insurance businesses and a Fortune 500 company. Old Republic stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, according to the release. As previously reported by the QCBJ, BITCO’s former Rock Island headquarters office building was eventually acquired and demolished. That made way for a new federal building, including a federal court facility still under construction by the Davenport-based Russell. In 2014, Russell was hired to design and develop the new national headquarters where BITCO now operates.
Building changes hands
As part of the negotiations, Russell agreed to purchase the former BITCO headquarters if it did not sell. Although it was sold at auction to a New Jersey investment group, Russell and KATCO Investments eventually purchased it from the original investment group. The new federal facility progressing on that site is a development project of Rock Island Investors Inc., a special purpose entity of Russell and KATCO Resources Inc. For Sentinel, the real estate deal with BITCO’s building marks its entrance into Davenport and the Quad Cities. “Adding Davenport, Iowa to our portfolio strategically enhances our footprint in the Midwest where we have a significant concentration of office properties,” Fred Lewis, Sentinel’s CEO, said in the release. “I am proud of our team’s ability to source and execute on transactions that provide risk-adjusted returns to our investors in a market that continues to face economic headwinds.”According to the release, the addition of the BITCO property grows Sentinel’s portfolio to 18 assets with more than 1.8 million square feet of gross leasable area. The company continues to source new commercial real estate opportunities across the office, industrial, retail, and automotive sectors.Sentinel was founded in 2019. It said it targets opportunistic situations that may not be a fit for traditional institutional investors due to size, location, or transaction complexity. And it uses extensive experience to understand each property’s narrative to create real value for investors.Visit www.sentinelnetlease.com for more information.
