Etkin Johnson continues sell-off with Lafayette Corporate Campus deal

LAFAYETTE — Less than six months after Etkin Johnson Real Estate Partners sold off its Colorado Tech Center assets and began winding down operations after more than three decades in the commercial real estate business, the company has now parted with its Lafayette Corporate Campus portfolio.

Etkin Johnson, through holding company Lafayette Corporate Campus LLC, sold the roughly 292,000-square-foot business park on Crescent Drive to Lafayette Boulder LLC, holding company registered to the Chicago address of real estate developer and investor Sterling Bay Cos. LLC for $74.5 million.

Sterling Bay last year formed a joint venture with Harrison Street Real Estate Capital LLC and has begun buying up properties with connections to the life sciences industry from Illinois to California, media reports show.

The five-building Lafayette Corporate Campus sits on 23 acres just north of the under-development Medtronic Inc. campus and SCL Health Inc.’s Good Samaritan Medical Center.

Etkin Johnson sold its 16-building, 1.67 million-square-foot Colorado Tech Center portfolio in April to Miami-based real estate investment trust Starwood Capital Group, a private investment group with more than $75 billion in assets under management. 

That deal was the largest sale by dollar volume in Colorado history.

At that time, company founders said they would continue to sell assets and cease much of its leasing and property management business. 

Etkin Johnson was founded in 1989 by Bruce Etkin and David Johnson and has since sold off a total of nearly $900 million in real estate. 

Through a spokesman, the pair said in April that they plan to step away from the business into retirement to spend more time with family and on philanthropic effort.

In addition to the CTC and Lafayette Corporate Campus sales, Etkin Johnson recently offloaded its Atria commercial development in Broomfield for $56.25 million. That two-building campus is home to the headquarters of iconic footwear brand Crocs Inc. (Nasdaq: CROX) and Conga, a rapidly growing end-to-end digital document transformation company registered to AppExtremes LLC.

Among the assets Etkin Johnson continues to hold are FalconView, a multi-family residential project in Colorado Springs; the two-building, 195,000-square-foot Axis 25 project directly west across Interstate 25 from the Ranch Event Center and the Embassy Suites in Loveland; the Edge 470 commercial park in Parker; and the Church Ranch Business Center in Westminster.

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