Rendering of the 701 Rio office project in Austin.
AUSTIN – B&Z Development has broken ground on a five-story, 120,000-square-foot speculative office building located just a few blocks southwest of the Texas Capitol on the western edge of downtown Austin.
CBRE arranged $72 million in combined loan and equity financing for the project, which is being developed under the name 701 Rio.
Mike Landon and Griffin Papaila from CBRE’s Debt & Structured Finance team in Dallas originated the financing. The construction loan is provided by Bank of Texas and BancFirst and offers a 24-month interest-only construction period with extension options. Barings is serving as the equity partner to B&Z Investments, LLC on behalf of institutional investors.
The development site sits at the northwest corner of West Seventh and Rio Grande streets, within walking distance of the flagship Whole Foods location.
Hensel Phelps Development and Hensel Phelps Construction Co. are the project’s co-developer and general contractor. The Austin-based firm BGK Architects designed the building.
Programmatically, the property will feature five stories of below-grade parking, approximately 12,000 square feet of ground-floor office or retail space, and four additional floors of office space above the ground level.
Jason Berkowitz and Diana Zuniga are developing the project through B&Z Development, a company they formed in 2007 that focuses on acquisitions and repositioning of core commercial real estate assets in Central Texas. Although both Berkowitz and Zuniga are long-time Austin real estate investors and developers with more than 40 years of combined experience, 701 Rio represents their first ground-up office development.
Berkowitz is founder and president of Roscoe Property Management, which ranks among the largest multifamily management firms in Texas. Zuniga is the owner and president of Investors Alliance, a real estate firm she founded in 1996 specializing in investment property sales and acquisitions. She also served as a development partner on the 400-foot, 42-story Spring condominium tower on Bowie Street in downtown Austin.
