Gamestop Buys 369,200-sf Shell For Hq, Distribution

globest.com05/11/04

GAMESTOP BUYS 369,200-SF SHELL FOR HQ, DISTRIBUTION

By Connie Gore GRAPEVINE, TX-The locally based, publicly traded GameStop Inc. has paid in the neighborhood of $13 million for a 369,200-sf office/warehouse shell built five years ago for a now-defunct online grocer that went belly-up before the keys could change hands.Throughout the Foster City, CA-based Webvan Group’s highs and lows, Hillwood finished the 17-acre development at 625 Westport Parkway and then brought in some temp tenants until Webvan’s bankruptcy was settled and a buyer could be found.GameStop, which leases 241,000 sf at nearby 2250 William D. Tate Ave., started talking for the property in July 2003. Marc Summey, GameStop’s vice president of real estate, tells GlobeSt.com that preliminary design for a class A finish-out has begun to reconfigure the building with 80,000 sf of headquarters office area and keep the balance for its only distribution location for 1,514 stores in 39 states, Puerto Rico and Ireland. The build-out cost has yet to be determined.Move-in is projected for spring 2005, Summey says of a site selected for proximity to the leased address, two miles to the southeast, to create the least disruption possible for employees and a supply chain as the nation’s largest provider of video game hardware, action figures and strategy guides. The corporate location also houses Game Informer, a video game magazine with more than 1.5 million subscribers.Dan Tatsch, senior vice president of Hillwood Investment Properties, says the seller agreed to redraw the parking lot, without laying additional concrete, for the 42 dock-door design to meet the new owner’s need for more than the existing 600 spaces.The building is located in a pocket of relatively new, predominately owner-occupied office/warehouses that got Hillwood as a member by virtue of Webvan’s unfulfilled contract for the build-to-suit. “We had other prospects, but this was out best prospect at the time,” he says of the one-off transaction.Tatsch and Mark Miller with Dallas-based Robert Lynn Co. handled negotiations for Hillwood while Tom McCarthy and Sharon Morrison, both with Staubach Co. in Dallas represented GameStop, which intends to fully vacate the leased location when construction wraps up. Staubach’s David Stack is construction manager for the finish-out, which has been awarded to Hillwood Construction Services.