Assurant Health moving to
Plymouth Corporate Center

by Burl Gilyard, Staff Writer, Finance and Commerce

Insurance provider takes 70,650 square feet

April 8, 2010 - Once upon a time, the 630,000-square-foot Plymouth Corporate Center was completely full of companies connected to the Minnetonka-based Carlson, formerly Carlson Companies.

But when Carlson vacated approximately 280,000 square feet of space, the landlord converted what had been essentially a single-tenant property into multi-tenant space.

Minnetonka-based Carlson Real Estate Company — a separate but affiliated company of Carlson — invested approximately $2.5 million to freshen up and reposition the property at 1405 Xenium Lane N. in Plymouth. The renovations were completed last June through September. Carlson Real Estate has owned the property since the early 1990s.

The tuned-up building has just attracted its second large lease since the overhaul.

Assurant Health has inked a lease for 70,650 square feet at the Plymouth Corporate Center and will move to the space in October. Assurant Health is an affiliate of the New York-based Assurant, Inc., a publicly traded provider of specialty insurance.

The company is moving from another location in Plymouth. Assurant has 441 local employees, 10 percent of whom work from home.

“Our current building lease will expire in October of 2010 and we took this opportunity to evaluate our options in the Plymouth area,” explained Assurant spokesman Peter Duckler in an e-mail. “The Plymouth Corporate Center is a newly-renovated, much larger, multi-tenant building.”

Last summer, the local technology infrastructure firm Comm-Works leased 65,000 square feet at Plymouth Corporate Center.

The Plymouth Corporate Center is an office/warehouse property, but 490,000 square feet of the building is office, an atypical combination of office and warehouse space.

“Really, the bulk of it is office,” said Kris Harris, senior director with Carlson Real Estate. “There aren’t a lot of buildings like this. It’s a really unique property.”

The property includes a café, on-site day care, a fitness center and conference and training rooms.

The Assurant deal will boost occupancy at the building to 78 percent.

Carlson Marketing, which was sold to a Canadian firm in 2009, occupies about 220,000 square feet of space in the complex. Harris said that about 127,000 square feet of space is still leased to Carlson entities.

Jim Freytag and Dave Marschinke of the local office of CB Richard Ellis represented Carlson Real Estate; Mark Evenson and Rory Johnson of the local office of UGL Equis represented Assurant Health.

“We’ve been really pleased with the amount of activity that we’ve had at the building. Most of the people that we have looking at it are larger users,” Harris said.

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Carlson Real Estate Company is an affiliate of Carlson, a global group of integrated companies providing hotel, marketing, restaurant and travel services directly to consumers, corporations and government entities. Carlson Real Estate Company is dedicated to developing long-term client relationships by operating with caring and integrity and providing innovative and accommodating solutions. Its portfolio of office and flex/industrial space concentrated in Minnesota, Arizona, and North Carolina exceeds 6 million combined square feet. For more information about Carlson Real Estate Company, visit www.carlsonrealestate.biz.