posted on June 11, 2010 00:58
Jabil Circuit Inc. (NYSE : JBL), an electronics design, manufacturing and product management company, is staying put in Round Rock at least until end of 2012, according to a deal announced Monday.
The agreement signed a few months ago extends the lease for three years, until the end of 2012, at Crystal Park in Round Rock.
The property, building D at Crystal Park II, is owned by the Newport Beach-based KBS Real Estate Investment Trust. The agreement is for 64,771 square feet, or close to 38 percent of the 169,301-square-foot building.
Jabil has maintained one of three U.S. aftermarket support offices at Crystal Park for its customers in the automotive, computer, defense and aerospace, digital office and medical industries since 2005, said Bob Ochsner, a KBS spokesman.
Holice Jeffries of the Memphis, Tenn. office of Central States Realty represented Jabil in lease negotiations, while Greg Johnson and Luke Wheeler of Transwestern Commercial in Austin represented KBS.
The property located at 106 Old Settlers Blvd. in Round Rock is also home to Xedia Technologies and Patterson Dental Supply.
Since the deal is a renewal, it’s a positive Jabil is staying but won’t lower the high vacancy rate for office space in Round Rock, which is at 51 percent - the highest in the Austin area. But brokers and economic development officials working in the market there stress that figure can be deceptive as Round Rock is one of the region’s smallest office markets and still in its infancy compared to other parts of Central Texas.
For example, Round Rock, with 566,995 square feet of vacant office space, has slightly more than 1.1 million total square feet. By comparison, Northwest Austin has more vacant space at 2.8 million square feet, but that total equates to only 26 percent of its 12.4 million-square-foot market. So while a new 100,000-square-foot lease would lower the vacancy rate in Northwest Austin by less than 1 percent, the same lease in Round Rock would reduce its vacancy rate by nearly 9 percent.
As for KBS, in addition to building D, the REIT owns building E at Crystal Park II, for a total of 240,452 onsite square feet. KBS-affiliated companies own 39 properties totaling more than 9.5 million square feet of commercial, industrial, retail and flex office space in Texas.
With more than 85,000 employees and facilities in 22 countries, Jabil provides comprehensive, individualized-focused solutions to customers in a broad range of industries, the company said.
June 8th, 2010 | Austin Business Journal