The leading provider of fully integrated commercial real estate services for the health science industry in the Washington and Baltimore metropolitan areas announces today that it has negotiated on behalf of Retina Consultants in a 5,545-square-foot lease at 6410 Rockledge Drive.

In this long-term lease extension, Scheer Partners Vice President Matt Brady and Vice President Nate Crowe represented Retina Consultants, which has four additional area offices and specializes in the care and treatment of diseases that affect the retina, vitreous and uveal tissues.

“Our client did consider relocating, and it examined numerous options throughout the Bethesda and North Bethesda submarkets,” Crowe says. “However, Retina Consultants opted to remain in its current office after we secured favorable terms, including reduced occupancy costs, as part of this new lease extension at 6410 Rockledge Drive.”

Known as the Champlain Building, the 127,000-square-foot property at 6410 Rockledge Drive is owned by Arlington-based Vornado/Charles E. Smith. This six-story medical-office building, on the corner of Rockledge Drive and Democracy Boulevard, is home to many of the Washington area’s top doctors and affiliates of nearby Suburban Hospital.

Click here to see a link to Citybizlist.com’s coverage of this news.

In his new position with Scheer Partners, McKeithan will focus on business development as well as supporting the company’s new listings. Most recently, McKeithan served as a research associate with Washington-based CoStar Group, where he worked for more than five years.

While at CoStar Group, which is a provider of information and analytic services to the commercial real estate sectors in the United States and the United Kingdom, he managed a portfolio of more than 1,600 properties in the D.C. market.

McKeithan says that he has been evaluating new career options for more than a year. “Given my experience with CoStar Group, I felt I had a significant leg up on other candidates seeking brokerage opportunities,” he says. “The key for me was finding the right fit. I wanted a collegial atmosphere with a small firm that had a proven track record of success.

He adds, “Nothing is ever too complicated unless you fail to see the simplicity of the complication.”

Seeking to work on a variety of “interesting and complicated real estate transactions,” McKeithan says that “Scheer Partners’ fully integrated model, with documented expertise in a variety of competencies, was the perfect fit. I am delighted to join Robert and his team and look forward to making an immediate contribution.”

Prior to joining CoStar Group, McKeithan was a credit manager with Wells Fargo in Waldorf, Md., and, before that, a credit-education specialist with Chantilly-based Intersections, which is a provider of subscription-based consumer-protection services. He also previously served as a credit analyst for several years with Bank of America in Dover, Del.

“We’re extremely pleased to welcome Omar to Scheer Partners,” says Robert Scheer, the company’s founder and president. “He possesses the character attributes we seek in our associates and has demonstrated numerous strong years of relationship-building skills at CoStar Group. Plus, he knows the commercial real estate market ‘like the back of his hand.’ I’m confident that he will add to our talented team and quickly play a key role in the continued success of Scheer Partners in 2012 and beyond.”

The hiring of McKeithan comes as Scheer Partners remains in an expansion mode, having in recent months brought on board a number of executives as the company further increases its market share among clients in the health-care and medical communities.

Other new additions to the team, which now totals 21 professionals, include Marc Schlesinger as a principal; Ken Luchs as a senior vice president; Anna Martin as a commercial property manager; and Yvonne Mirowski as director of marketing and operations.

The leading provider of fully integrated commercial real estate services for the health science industry in the Washington and Baltimore metropolitan areas announces today that it has negotiated on behalf of Erickson Orthodontics in a 2,314-square-foot lease at 13321 New Hampshire Ave., a 29,115-square-foot building owned by AGAR LP.

In this 10-year lease extension, Scheer Partners Vice President Nate Crowe and Associate Jamie Rash represented Erickson Orthodontics, which has remained at this New Hampshire Avenue location for more than 20 years. The founder of Erickson Orthodontics, Dr. Duane Erickson, also has a second office at 2935 Olney Sandy Spring Road in Olney.

Erickson Orthodontic’s current lease at 13321 New Hampshire Ave. expires this August. Crowe and Rash approached the landlord a year in advance about their client’s renewal.

Through a rental-rate reduction, the resetting of the operating-expense base year, and several months of free rent, the Scheer Partners brokers have decreased Erickson Orthodontic’s real estate costs by 32 percent in the first year of the new lease term, as well as 18 percent annually over 10 years.

The rent decrease alone will save this client more than $100,000 over the next decade. Furthermore, operating-expense savings will total another $70,000. Crowe and Rash also secured for Erickson Orthodontics a strong tenant-improvement allowance for various improvements to the space.

“We are extremely pleased to have executed this extremely favorable deal on behalf of Erickson Orthodontics,” Rash says. “Our aggressive negotiations with the landlord at 13321 New Hampshire Ave. have resulted in our client dramatically cutting its real estate expenses.”

Erickson says that he did think about relocating, or buying a property to develop, within two to three miles of his existing New Hampshire Avenue office. “While we have been tenants at 13321 New Hampshire Ave. for 20-plus years, it was time to seriously consider our options, and Nate and Jamie helped us do a thorough evaluation,” Erickson says.

“An investment in leasehold improvements, location and name recognition, and the positive terms that Nate and Jamie were able to negotiate were all factors in our decision to stay,” Erickson adds. “With their help, we were able to finalize an excellent new lease. Nate and Jamie were great through whole process. We are delighted with their work.”

When the economic downturn began in 2008, virtually every company in the local commercial real estate sector slowed down, and Scheer Partners was no exception. The recession forced the Rockville-based company, a leading provider of fully integrated commercial real estate services for the health science industry in the Washington and Baltimore metropolitan areas, to scale down from three D.C.-area offices and dozens of employees to one location and a small, albeit talented, cadre of brokers.

Though difficult market conditions have remained in place more recently, over the past 12 months Scheer Partners managed to stage an explosive turnaround as it underwent an instrumental transformation by turning its specialized life sciences niche into a dominant position in the greater medical community.

Scheer and the firm’s other leaders had to make some tough decisions, and overcome a variety of hurdles along the way, but the company has clearly found its footing and is now rolling along. This is evident in an extremely prosperous 2011 that saw Scheer Partners carry out significant deals for a range of biotechnology and health-care businesses; considerably boost its overall client base; expand its work force; and experience exponential revenue growth.

Today, the company is much stronger, and results on par with last year are expected in 2012, executives say. Pound for pound, the current team at Scheer Partners is the most productive group in the firm’s more than 20-year history, says Scheer, the company’s founder and president.

“Our per-agent output is up more than 30 percent in the last two years,” he says. “The sizable life sciences transactions we completed in 2011 for Advanced BioScience Laboratories, Mars Symbioscience and Novavax alone represented nearly 250,000 square feet, which was approximately 62 percent of the total net absorption leased, with a gross aggregate transaction volume of $80 million.”

Behind these and the many other notable deals are the professionals at Scheer Partners, and the company of late has certainly bolstered its broker and executive ranks. One example is Marc Schlesinger, the founder of Rockville-based Landmarc Asset Advisors, whom Scheer Partners has named a principal to lead its investment and asset-services efforts.

A 24-year industry veteran, Schlesinger is tasked with originating and structuring investment and development opportunities in partnership with several established equity partners, including the Greater Washington Life Sciences Fund, a venture formed in 2008 by Scheer Partners and the Chevy Chase-based JBG Cos.

Schlesinger also supports business development and provides strategic oversight of commercial real estate services, which include brokerage, as well as construction, facilities and property management for the firm’s clients. Recently, he was instrumental in the company’s engagement by McLean-based Mars Inc. for construction and property-management services at its new site in Germantown.

What’s more, with the additions of Ken Luchs and Perry Berman, Scheer Partners now has senior staff filling all of the strategic competencies in the company’s full-service platform. “This enables us to execute on complex acquisitions, brokerage, construction management and financial activities with equal ease,” Scheer says. “Most importantly, we increased our market penetration in our targeted health-care sector by more than 24 percent from 2009, showing sustained average quarter-to-quarter growth of 12 percent, based on the total value of transactions.”

That accomplishment in the health-care field is rooted in a decision made two years ago by executives at Scheer Partners to leverage the firm’s stellar client base in the life sciences to vastly increase the company’s business in the much larger – and more opportunistic – medical space.

Scheer Partners officials arrived at this pivotal determination after assessing the firm’s competitive advantages, such as its deep industry relationships, long-time experience and technical expertise, as well as several key factors in the marketplace, including an aging population, favorable demographics in Montgomery County and other jurisdictions around the Washington region, and new federal health-care legislation.

Moving forward with this renewed focus has represented the number-one priority for everyone at Scheer Partners, and, despite the uncertainty that came with this shift in strategy, the reward is clearly outweighing the initial risk. By achieving an abundance of major objectives in 2011, Scheer Partners has managed to outperform all other boutique, regional and national competitors entrenched in the D.C. area.

“This past year has amounted to a tremendous success story for our company,” Scheer says. “We’ve brought on board several well-known brokers and executives, and the sheer number of transactions and service deliveries that we have done over the last 12 months for clients in health care and the life sciences, even as we faced ongoing market challenges, is extremely encouraging. I am confident that our momentum will undoubtedly continue in 2012.”

Here are some highlights from 2011 that illustrate the robust year recorded by Scheer Partners, including leases completed for tenants, property listings obtained from landlords, consulting agreements won, and new members joining the firm’s brokerage team:

LEASE AND COMMERCIAL TRANSACTIONS

Advanced BioScience Laboratories
In the first quarter of 2011, contract research/manufacturing organization Advanced BioScience Laboratories (ABL) moved into its new 72,000-square-foot headquarters at 9800 Medical Center Drive in Rockville, as well as a separate 35,000-square-foot vivarium facility, also in Rockville. Scheer Partners represented ABL in these two leases, negotiating the transactions as well as providing construction and project management on the combined $15 million build-out of both Rockville properties.

Mars Symbioscience
Mars Symbioscience, the global health and life sciences unit of food manufacturer Mars, recently signed a lease for 65,000 square feet in Germantown, and this year it will relocate from Rockville to the new space. Scheer Partners negotiated the lease on behalf of Mars Symbioscience and is also providing ongoing construction and property-management services.

Novavax
Vaccine maker Novavax committed to 74,209 square feet of laboratory, manufacturing and office space in Gaithersburg, in a deal put together by Scheer Partners. During the first quarter of 2012, Novavax, which landed a lucrative federal-government contract in 2011 to develop influenza vaccines, will move its corporate office to 21,209 square feet at 22 Firstfield Road, while the entire 53,000-square-foot building at 20 Firstfield Road will serve as its primary commercial-scale manufacturing plant.

Additionally, over the course of the past year, Scheer Partners executed more than a dozen medical-related transactions totaling 66,000 square feet of space for a variety of clinical practitioners and health-care companies.

PROPERTY LISTINGS

200 Professional Drive
Douglas Legum Development engaged Scheer Partners to market 200 Professional Drive, a 63,000-square-foot building in Gaithersburg. Brokers at Scheer Partners are targeting large office users, as well as health-care companies and medical practitioners, for the 48,500 square feet of available space for lease.

501 N. Frederick Ave.
North Bethesda-based Guardian Realty Investors hired Scheer Partners to market its 50,549-square-foot building at 501 N. Frederick Ave. in Gaithersburg. By March 31 of 2012, Kaiser Permanente is slated to consolidate its area operations into a separate 200,00-square-foot facility in Gaithersburg, leaving behind 35,000 square feet of fully improved medical-office space at 501 N. Frederick Ave.

1701 Research Blvd.
San Diego-based BioMed Realty Trust called on Scheer Partners to market 1701 Research Blvd., a 104,743-square-foot building in Rockville that BioMed is repositioning as a Class A lab and office property. Subsequently, Meso Scale Diagnostics fully leased this facility.

19735 Germantown Road
Expanding its long-standing relationship with the Bethesda-based Walker Group and Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Scheer Partners secured the listing of the 97,0000-square-foot medical-office building at 19735 Germantown Road in Germantown, where 37,000 square feet is available for lease. This project boasts a state-of-the-art, hospital-operated 24-hour emergency room on the first floor and is ideally suited for medical practitioners seeking to access the growing up-county health-care market.

CONSULTING AGREEMENTS

Scheer Partners’ expertise is also receiving attention outside of the local commercial real estate industry. In recent months, the firm received two consulting contracts centered on the development and marketing of life sciences-related assets.

In one project, the University of Rhode Island hired Scheer Partners to market and develop a 250,000-square-foot, multi-building research and technology park on the university’s campus that would house engineering, science and tech firms.

Secondly, Space Florida, the state’s aerospace economic-development agency, engaged Scheer Partners to determine the marketability of its 104,000-square-foot Space Life Sciences Laboratory (SLSL).

KEY NEW HIRES

Ken Luchs
Ken Luchs, a 50-year real estate professional who previously served as president and CEO of the Shannon & Luchs Company, which was one of the largest full-service real estate firms in the Washington market, is a senior vice president with Scheer Partners. In this position, he will concentrate on, among other things, representing health-care tenants and owners of medical-office buildings in the D.C. region.

Anna Martin
Anna Martin recently began working at Scheer Partners as a commercial property manager. Previously, she served as a property manager with the JBG Cos. At Scheer Partners, Martin, who has 11 years of industry experience, is focusing on all aspects of property management, such as administration, budgeting, compliance, occupancy control, personnel, tenant relations and vendor management.

Yvonne Mirowski
Yvonne Mirowski is Scheer Partners’ director of operations and marketing. She has more than 13 years of marketing experience in the commercial real estate sector. In the Washington area, Mirowski formerly held stints at American Real Estate Partners and Cushman & Wakefield. Her responsibilities at Scheer Partners include marketing Montgomery County’s technology incubator program, participating in industry events, and working on the company’s interactive marketing and public relations campaigns, as well as its quarterly newsletters. 

Develop Here – But Not There?
by Mark Arend
Baltimore is the location of two new headquarters projects – one involving construction of a new waterfront office complex for Constellation Energy Group, which is merging with Chicago-based Exelon, and one the expansion of Under Armour’s headquarters in the Locust Point area.

In early February, Exelon and Constellation announced the developer, site and design firms for their new headquarters building in downtown Baltimore, contingent on the completion of the companies’ proposed merger, which is expected to be finalized this spring.

The Maryland Public Service Commission approved the merger on February 17th. The proposed transaction has been approved by shareholders of Exelon and Constellation. Required regulatory approvals or reviews have been completed by the New York Public Service Commission, the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the Department of Justice, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The merger also requires regulatory approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Exelon conditionally selected Harbor East Development Group, LLC, as the developer for the proposed headquarters to be located at Harbor Point between Fells Point and Harbor East in Baltimore, in a to-be-constructed building.

The award is contingent on Exelon and the developer reaching an agreement on lease terms and other conditions.

“We are excited to move forward with our plans to build a new Baltimore headquarters facility, bringing significant benefits to the City of Baltimore, including additional jobs and tax revenue,” said Exelon President and COO Christopher M. Crane in a press release. “We are committed to Baltimore’s downtown and its business district, and we look forward to being a growing part of the Baltimore community as the overall vitality of the city’s downtown continues to flourish.”

The selected developer was evaluated and consequently selected based on criteria that included their capabilities and experience and their proposed competitive and economic lease terms.

Additional site selection parameters included proximity to the downtown waterfront, the ability to accommodate 300,000 to 370,000 rentable sq. ft. (27,870 to 34,373 sq. m.), a trading floor size of at least 70,000 sq. ft. (6,503 sq. m.), office floor size of approximately 30,000 sq. ft. (2,787 sq. m.) and availability for occupancy in 2014.

“It was clear from our first discussion with Exelon that they wanted a unique headquarters facility that would create a dynamic home for their growing Baltimore work force,” said Michael S. Beatty, president, Harbor East Development Group, LLC. “When people visit this site in three years they will realize just how committed Exelon and Constellation are to not only their employees but to the greater community and the environment. This project will be a model catalyst for the development of a truly sustainable and vibrant neighborhood.”

Just how “downtown” the site is, is a matter of debate among some, who consider the location on the edge of Baltimore’s waterfront district to be a bit of a stretch from the central business district. But suitable space for the new headquarters project was not available in the CBD, company officials maintain, and the location will enable the company to build from scratch a signature building that will make a statement and implement Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) features from the outset.

There are significant benefits to the City of Baltimore based on the selected location. Development of the building is expected to create more than 1,000 construction and other jobs and provide new tax revenue for the city.

Construction of the new building was a commitment made as part of the companies’ merger settlement with the State of Maryland, the Maryland Energy Administration, the City of Baltimore and the Baltimore Building and Construction Trades Council announced Dec. 15.

Under the settlement, Exelon, Constellation and BGE will provide a package of benefits totaling more than $1 billion and expected to create more than 6,000 jobs in Maryland (including the 1,000 jobs related to the building).

Meanwhile, Under Armour in January gained support for its proposed headquarters campus expansion at Tide Point from the Locust Point Civic Association of homeowners, a move that was not required for the expansion to proceed, but was nonetheless welcome. The sportswear and equipment company agreed to neighborhood improvements and enhanced support of community events and facilities.

Central Planning
On another more statewide front, a controversial development blueprint called PlanMaryland is being floated by the governor’s office as a way to curb sprawl and sustainably manage economic development in rural parts of the state.

Maryland needs the plan to better manage the 560,000 acres (226,800 hectares) of projected growth in the next 18 years, the O’Malley Administration maintains, for these reasons: (1) to encourage sustainable development and protect quality of life; (2) to develop land at a pace consistent with growth in population and housing; (3) to preserve the state’s natural, historical and cultural resources; (4) to strengthen existing cities and communities and reduce tax burdens; (5) to protect farmland; (6) to reduce automobile dependency; (7) to increase access to transit options; (8) to concentrate jobs in existing cities and communities, strengthening economic development; (9) to increase housing affordability; and (10) to minimize residential land consumption outside of existing communities.

Specifics as to how PlanMaryland would be implemented and enforced are being worked out. But it’s not being well received by areas hoping to attract economic development from companies seeking a non-urban location.

“It is an attempt by the State of Maryland to focus development around existing transportation, particularly mass transit and smart growth areas,” says Perry Berman, a real estate agent at Scheer Partners, a Rockville, Md.-based full-service commercial real estate firm, and 30-year veteran of the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission.

In December, Scheer Partners negotiated a nearly 40,000-sq.-ft. (3,700-sq.-m.) lease for JDA Software Group at the DANAC Stiles corporate campus in Rockville, in Montgomery County, where it has been a tenant for the past five years, since its acquisition of Manugistics Group, a provider of synchronized revenue management and supply-chain solutions. Earlier that month, Scheer Partners worked with Novavax Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, in securing 74,000 sq. ft. (6,900 sq. m.) of lab, manufacturing and office space in Gaithersburg.

“This plan is not being well received by the rural counties, who see it as an attempt by the state to control their land use, which traditionally has been a local prerogative,” says Berman. Previous state plans only permitted the state to comment on such matters, but PlanMaryland suggests a more proactive role in the location of state facilities and state funding, he explains, adding that all residential, commercial and industrial land usage would be scrutinized.

“Rural parts of the state have concerns about their own financial situations and growth and businesses, and many of them have already established plans for development, particularly large-lot housing. The state is saying it wants to end that kind of growth or sprawl.”

Should potential investors in Maryland’s non-urban locations take notice?

“Yes, it should give them pause,” Berman states. “It’s up to the state legislature to enact this, and it’s not clear what they will do at this point. But this will be one of the major issues in the legislature’s discussions this year.”

County associations, chambers of commerce, builders and environmental groups all are weighing in. “This is a big deal, especially with respect to the business climate. Maryland has been perceived as being not as business friendly as, say, Virginia. Whether it’s reality or not, once something like this gets approved, the perception is there, which has as much power as anything else.”

Some counties will likely support the plan, says Berman, such as Baltimore and Montgomery Counties, which maintain their land-use planning is already based on premises like those in PlanMaryland. But how those areas’ legislators will act remains to be seen.

“It’s a very interesting tradeoff. From a philosophical point of view, you would think that clusters and growth and development around existing public transit is the way to go, and we should preserve the rural areas. Unless you’re in a rural area. They might not want to be preserved. Frederick and Anne Arundel Counties’ land use is mixed. What’s included in the plan and what’s not? How do the lines get drawn? Who’s in charge? What are the standards? Who determines what’s right? The counties should determine that, and under this plan, it’s the State of Maryland. It’s easy to talk about values in the absolute, but when you try to apply them, someone will get hurt.”