Premium content from San Antonio Business Journal – by Tricia Lynn Silva
Date: Friday, January 14, 2011, 5:00am CST
A firm bullish on the investment opportunities in San Antonio’s commercial real estate market is now finding its own holdings to be in demand. During the last quarter of 2010, Kotel Investments, Inc. closed on the sale of two industrial buildings it owns in the Alamo City. In both cases, the buyers were companies that had previously been tenants of the buildings.
On the city’s North Central Side, Kotel Investments sold a 10,000-square-foot building at 8902 Broadway to Progressive Solutions. The deal closed in October, according to Rami Kotel, who co-founded Kotel Investments with his brother Jeff. Their firm is dually headquartered in San Antonio and Woodland Hills, Calif. Progressive Solutions had been a tenant in the Broadway building for the last four years, Rami Kotel says. The company works with general contractors to design and manufacture specialized building products – like shade structures and historic building replications – that may not fall within the standard scope of a project.
On the city’s south side, Koru Steel’s first foray into the US Market, says Jaime Salazar Ortiz, who is the manager of the local office. Koru Steel is a distributor of the steel used in commercial constructions projects – including fences, windows and door frames, and roof suspensions. Headquartered in Mexico, Koru Steel was started by Guillen’s father-in-law, Ubaldo Ortiz, back in the 1980s. San Antonio, says Guillen, was the ideal starting point for Koru’s U.S. operations. It is a growing city. And in terms of logistics, San Antonio is prime spot from which Koru Steel can serve clients throughout the country, he adds. As for the decision to buy the Pan Am Building, Guillen says that the company was looking for a long-term investment in San Antonio.
For Kotel Investments, the recent building sales are representative of the good story that San Antonio has to tell, says Rami Kotel, referring to the various media coverage of late that have highlighted the Alamo City’s strength –including its place on Forbes’ list of cities that are best surviving the economic downturn.
To date, Kotel Investments owns about 300,000 square feet of industrial space between San Antonio and Austin. And even as the firm works to bulk up its portfolio, Rami Kotel also expects that there will be more opportunities in the near future for the firm to turn more of its tenants into property owners.