Growing Tech Firm Grabs Vacant Allen Campus
Strike Photonics to occupy former Finistar office and industrial buildings on U.S. 75.
(October 5, 2021) – A growing tech firm has snapped up an Allen office and manufacturing campus.
Strike Photonics Inc. acquired the 600 Millennium Drive property which previously housed Finistar, which had about 100 workers in the building.
Commercial property firm Jones Lang LaSalle has been marketing the 14-acre campus, which is on U.S. Highway 75 near Bethany Drive.
The property has a combination of office, lab, warehouse and mechanical space.
“It is a beautiful building, and we are blessed to have it,” said Strike Photonics CEO Todd Doshier. “It has clean room capabilities and mechanical room infrastructure built in, which is what made that space suitable for us.
“We do a portion of assembly and packaging for semiconductor wafers that have been designed to our specifications.”
Doshier said his firm plans to occupy the campus starting late this year and will initially have about 20 workers in the buildings. “But that will continue to grow over time,” he said.
He said Strike Photonics now operates out of an office in Dallas and a small lab space. All of those operations will be consolidated in Allen.
The Millennium Drive building was constructed in 1996 and had been used by California-based Finistar since 2005. In 2019, Finistar announced that it was closing the Allen operations and moving the producing to a facility in Sherman.
The building was sold by a unit of by New York-based WP Carey.
“This has been one of our largest vacancies in the city at 165,000 square feet,” said Dan Bowman with the Allen Economic Development Corp. “We’ve been working to backfill it, and we started talking to Strike Photonics back in the spring.
“For us, it’s a slam dunk,” Bowman said. “It’s a unique building that needs a unique user.”
Ownership of the building was transferred to Strike Photonic’s investment partner, Las Vegas-based Kingsbarn Realty Capital.
The purchase was financed with a $9.85 million loan provided by an affiliate of Chicago-based JDI Realty, county records show.
JLL’s Zane Marcell, Melissa Holland, Chris Stout and Robby Westerfield marketed the Finistar campus for sale.
Source: Dallas Morning News
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