A BIG DEAL

OKLAHOMA CITY  – The Boeing Oklahoma City campus has been sold for $124.7 million to a group of California investors doing business under the name OKC Aerospace 1 LLC.

Boeing officials expect business to continue as usual under the new landlord – though they have not yet been introduced to the new owners.

The seller was Oklahoma City­-based Gardner Tanenbaum, which owned the property and leased it to Boeing. The Boeing campus consists of three office buildings on more than 30 acres directly west of Tinker Air Force Base at 6001 S. Air Depot Blvd. in Oklahoma City. Gardner Tanenbaum developed the buildings, with a total square footage of about 530,000 square feet, to suit Boeing’s specifications in 2007, 2011 and 2012.

“We never put it out for sale, but you can do things through brokers,” said Tanenbaum. “I do a lot of business with Newmark, Brett Price and Mark Beffort in particular, and we were talking about it and they had some investors that had some money to invest. They believe in aerospace, they understand aerospace, they totally believe in Oklahoma and Oklahoma City,” said Richard Tanenbaum Gardner Tanenbaum CEO

Gardner Tanenbaum has developed more than 1 million square feet of aerospace real estate in Oklahoma, much of it on a 160-acre tract of land Tanenbaum purchased in 2001 that now includes the Boeing campus and facilities custom-built for Northrup Grumman and L-3 Communications.

The transaction was conducted by Oklahoma City firm Newmark Grubb Levy Strange Beffort, which represented both the buyer and the seller. Tanenbaum said he hadn’t been looking for a buyer, but the California investor group offered the right price.

The Gardner Tanenbaum firm is busier than ever with projects in Oklahoma City.

“We have $120-130 million under construction right now,” said Tanenbaum. 

Neither the seller nor the brokerage firm would offer much information about the buyer, OKC Aerospace 1 LLC.

In the announcement of the sale released to the media, the seller and broker highlighted the investment being made in Oklahoma’s aerospace industry.

“Substantial investments from the West Coast, such as this transaction, show that the nation is taking notice of the aerospace industry’s dynamic growth in our state,” said Tanenbaum in the statement.

“The Boeing OKC campus is the fastest-growing Boeing site in the United States throughout the past five years,” said Newmark Senior Vice President Brett Price in the statement announcing the sale. “With the $14.3 billion contract awarded by the Department of Defense for Boeing to service U.S. Air Force aircraft and the first of 14 maintenance hangars for Boeing’s KC-46 Pegasus nearing completion, Boeing’s Oklahoma City workforce will continue to rise.”

Business is progressing as usual at the Boeing campus, said Nancy Anderson, vice president of aircraft modernization and modification, who oversees operations at the Oklahoma City campus. The reasons Boeing came to Oklahoma City have not changed, said Anderson.

“Oklahoma City is a growing vibrant place to be,” said Anderson. “We’re there for all the right reasons: close to our customer, great workforce.” The facilities are in good shape, she said. “All of the facilities meet our high standards and it’s actually a wonderful work environment for our employees. We’re really happy with our location and our landlord and see just great growth potential for us right there in those facilities.”

In April 2019, the Department of Defense designated Tinker AFB as the site for research and evaluation of the B-1 Lancer and B-52 Stratofortress bomber fleets through a contract awarded to Boeing for a project that could take$14 billion and 10 years to complete.