Real Capital Solutions makes Dallas debut with $66M office acquisition

LOUISVILLE — Real Capital Solutions, the Louisville-based real estate portfolio company run by Marcel Arsenault, continued its holiday season shopping spree this week with the $66 million purchase of an office building in Dallas, RCS’ first property in that city. 

Tower at Park Lane is a 20-story, 509,818-square-foot Class A office building at 8750 N. Central Expressway, near Dallas’ tony Park Lane mixed-use district, that last sold for more than $100 million in 2017.

“This acquisition reflects our commitment to strategically acquire high-quality assets at a substantial discount but with considerable upside potential in vibrant, mixed-use environments,” RCS chief investment officer Adam Abeln said in a prepared statement. “We are eager to implement our value-add approach to modernize and reposition Tower at Park Lane to win the leasing wars and create a workplace that meets the evolving needs of today’s tenants.”

For the past several years, Marcel Arsenault has been saying that distressed commercial real estate assets will be increasingly ripe for the picking by savvy investors, and now “RCS is advancing its nationwide investment strategy with an aggressive acquisition spree,” the company said this week. 

RCS recently scooped up Belleview Tower, a 12-story, 201,670-square-foot Class B office building at 7887 E. Belleview Ave. in the Denver Tech Center, for $20 million, less than half of what the property traded for in 2019.

The Belleview Tower deal is RCS’ third Denver-area acquisition in the past year, having previously purchased two buildings in the DTC and one in Englewood. The company also recently bought an 11-story, 178,510-square-foot Class A office building at 1501 M St. NW in Washington, D.C.

RCS said this week that it plans to spend as much as $1 billion on distressed real estate assets in 2025.

The company is betting that the market is close to rock bottom and there are bargains to be found. 

“We think that in a year or two there will be many opportunities, particularly in distressed real estate,” Arsenault told BizWest in a 2023 interview. 

Once commercial real estate bottoms out, “we’ll turn the switch and become very aggressive buying real estate at a good price. But right now prices are falling and, in our belief, prices won’t stop falling for at least another year or two,” Arsenault said in 2023. “You don’t want to catch a falling knife, as they say. Right now, safety is the word. But as soon as the market hits bottom, then we’ll file in.”

The Tower at Park Lane deal in Dallas was brokered by Russell Ingrum and Patrick Benoist with CBRE.

RCS said that it “plans to invest approximately $13 million in capital improvements, including upgrades to the building’s lobby and fitness center, the addition of third floor “town hall” spec suites and enhanced back-of-house amenities. These efforts aim to elevate the tenant experience and solidify the property’s position as a premier office destination in the region.

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