CBL Center opens tower

“Location, location, location” is a byword in the real estate and retail industries, so it may be no wonder that a company specializing in both trades is promoting the location of its newest development.

CBL & Associates Properties Inc. is celebrating the opening today of an addition to its CBL Center office complex on the Hamilton Place mall campus. The new 76,000-square-foot building is adjacent to the original CBL Center building.

“We’re close to the interstate, the mall and the airport,” said Katie Reinsmidt, CBL’s director of corporate communications and investor relations. “It delivers a cluster of business customers right at your front door.”

The new office building is 66 percent leased, and the remainder is ideal for a variety of professional and business-to-business users, said Bernard “Ben” Byrne III, CBL’s director of special projects-development leasing. Such businesses as insurance agents, stock brokers and advertising agencies have shown interest in the building, he said.

The four-story building has allowed two tenants to move from the original complex and consolidate their operations and is giving CBL a chance to expand into the tenants’ former office space in the first building.

One of those tenants, hotel operator Vision Hospitality Group, went from 1,600 square feet to 6,000 square feet with the move. The company will have room to grow, President and CEO Mitch Patel said, and moved a hotel support side operation there from East Ridge.

Vision has 15 corporate staffers but now can fit 25 into its office, Mr. Patel said. The company has nine hotels open and 11 under development around the Southeast.

“Now we can have the proper infrastructure to support those hotels,” he said.

The other tenant that moved is EMJ Corp., a general contractor which built both office buildings. EMJ occupies the top two floors in the new building and has a training room on the second floor.

Much of the vacant space in the new building is “raw space,” Mr. Byrne said, and can be built to a tenant’s standards. The smallest available space is 1,200 square feet, he said.

Mr. Byrne said he is in negotiations with a coffee/sandwich shop to operate a small store on the ground floor of the new building. The property is Class A space, he said, meaning it has full service, from on-site management to ample parking, which happens to be free, something that’s hard to find downtown.