Highwoods Properties, Inc., the largest owner and operator of suburban office properties in the Southeast, today announced that it will begin development of GlenLake Six, a $22.6 million, 122,000 square foot multi-tenant Class “A” office building with structured parking in the Glenwood/Creedmoor submarket of Raleigh. This will be the third of seven buildings Highwoods plans for its GlenLake Office park, a highly desired infill location in the heart of Raleigh. A commitment from one customer to lease 15% of the space in GlenLake Six has been secured.

Currently, GlenLake One is 100% leased and GlenLake Four, which was just delivered, is 70% leased. These three Class “A” GlenLake office buildings will encompass a total of 438,000 square feet.

Ed Fritsch, president and chief executive officer of Highwoods, stated, “GlenLake continues to be a high demand location for upscale professional businesses in Raleigh. With less than 50,000 square feet remaining for lease in GlenLake Four, a firm commitment from one customer to pre-lease 18,000 square feet in GlenLake Six, active interest from other businesses to locate to our GlenLake Office Park, and continued improvement in the overall Raleigh market, it was an easy decision that now is the right time to begin development of GlenLake Six.”

“Our GlenLake Office Park dovetails with our stated development strategy, as outlined in our Strategic Plan, of building a portfolio of high quality, differentiated assets in infill locations. The $195 million of development delivered since January 1, 2005 is 73% leased and the projects scheduled to deliver over the next two years are close to 45% pre-leased,” added Mr. Fritsch.

With the addition of this development project, the Company’s development pipeline will grow to 2.7 million square feet, representing an investment of $446 million. These developments are expected to generate stabilized cash returns on the total investment of between 9% and 10%.

GlenLake Office Park is located just off the Glenwood Avenue corridor between I-440 and I-40, one of the most prestigious and desirable locations in Raleigh. At the end of the fourth quarter, this submarket’s vacancy was 9.3%. Construction on GlenLake Six will begin in March and the anticipated completion date is the second quarter of 2008.

Certain matters discussed in this press release, such as expected future operational results and the related assumptions underlying our expected operational results, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are distinguished by use of the words “will”, “expect”, “intends” and words of similar meaning. Although Highwoods believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be achieved.

Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Highwoods’ current expectations include, among others, the following: the financial condition of our customers could deteriorate; unwaived defaults, if any, under our debt instruments could result in an acceleration of some of our outstanding debt; speculative development by others could result in excessive supply of office properties relative to customer demand; we may not be able to lease or re-lease space quickly or on as favorable terms as old leases; unexpected difficulties in obtaining additional capital to satisfy our future cash needs or unexpected increases in interest rates would increase our debt service costs; and others detailed in the Company’s 2005 Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent SEC reports.

About the Company

Highwoods Properties, Inc., a member of the S&P MidCap 400 Index, is a fully integrated, self-administered real estate investment trust (”REIT”) that provides leasing, management, development, construction and other customer-related services for its properties and for third parties. At September 30, 2006, the Company owned or had an interest in 414 in-service office, industrial and retail properties encompassing approximately 34.9 million square feet. Highwoods also owns 798 acres of development land. Highwoods is based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and its properties and development land are located in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. For more information about Highwoods Properties, please visit our Web site at www.highwoods.com.

Contact:

Highwoods Properties, Inc.
Tabitha Zane
Vice President, Investor Relations
919-431-1529

Source: Highwoods Properties, Inc.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Real Estate. Tags: Commitment customer-related services development Ed Fritsch Florida Georgia industrial and retail properties Iowa Kansas Missouri North Carolina Office Building Projects Raleigh Real Estate real estate investment real estate investment trust REIT retail retail properties self-administered real estate investment trust South Carolina Tennessee Virginia . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.