PHOTO TAKEN BY: PATRIK ARGAST

Gantry, the largest independent commercial mortgage banking firm in the U.S., has secured a $32 million permanent loan to refinance 611 Cowper Street in Palo Alto, an award-winning downtown class A midrise office building. The modern, LEED Silver certified property offers a total of 30,000 square feet of leasable office space across three floors, above two subterranean levels of parking. The property is 100% leased to Amazon in a long-term agreement.  In 2022, the City of Palo Alto recognized the project with an Architectural Excellence Award for the project’s unique and sustainable mixed-use design, which includes a separated fourth-floor penthouse residence.

Gantry’s Jeff Wilcox, Principal, and Andrew Ferguson, Associate, with the firm’s San Francisco production office represented the borrower, a private real estate investor. The 8.5-year, non-recourse, fixed rate loan was secured with a national insurance company lender.

According to Gantry’s Jeff Wilcox, “While office assets continue to face strong headwinds in the current market cycle, conditions are improving. Gantry continues to have success engaging a growing roster of lenders on quality office projects and successfully refinancing maturing office debt for performing assets with stable permanent loans. 611 Cowper checks all the boxes for what constitutes a qualifying office property for lenders in today’s market realities; strong cash flow metrics, a long-term lease, modern building systems and finishes, LEED certification, and a desirable location in a top performing submarket for tech, finance, and other professional services.  Having a combination of these key metrics is essential to creating a robust lender pool for office assets. We were able to review this loan with a broad cross section of the market, ultimately identifying a national insurance company as the best financing source.”