Legacy Office Tower in Plano Could Fetch Close to $125 Million

West Plano's Legacy business park could soon be seeing another major property sale.When the former Encana Oil & Gas Tower near Legacy Drive sold five years ago is traded for one of the highest prices ever for a suburban Dallas office property - about $375 per square foot.Now the 12-story high-rise is expected to trade again for an even higher price, closer to $400 per square foot.Dallas-based Tier REIT is in talks to buy the high-rise, which is more than 75 percent leased, real estate brokers say.The real estate investment trust already owns two building sites adjacent to the former Encana Tower.Tenants in the tower include LegacyTexas Bank, Aimbridge Hospitality and Ally Financial.Officials with Tier REIT declined to comment. The investor has properties in eight states and the District of Columbia.Originally built for Canada-based Encana Oil & Gas, the 318,000-square-foot office building is just north of the popular Shops at Legacy retail and mixed-use center on the east side of the Dallas North Tollway.Commercial real estate firm JLL has been quietly marketing the high-rise for sale. The building is owned by a unit of Arizona-based Cole Real Estate Investments.If the tower purchase is completed as expected, it would be one of the highest prices paid for office in Plano's booming Legacy business park.Last fall Boston-based Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. paid almost $140 million for the Legacy Tower at the southeast corner of the tollway and Legacy Drive.Both buildings are just across the highway from Legacy West, the new $3 billion mixed-use development that will include huge office campuses for Toyota, Liberty Mutual Insurance and JPMorgan Chase.With the growth in that area, the increased sales price for the Encana tower isn't a surprise, said Gary Carr with CBRE, who brokered the sale of the same building five years ago."The quality of what is going on up there is amazing," Carr said. "And there's not a lot of office space on the market in that area."  Continue reading...