Partners Group is on a roll.
The global private market management firm, based in Baar, Switzerland, has more than $66 billion in assets under management.
Its latest financial report shows the Partners Group, with investments in private equity, real estate, infrastructure and debt, booked a 24.75 percent year-over-year increase in revenues and a 41.6 percent jump in net income.
The truly global company invested in everything from a trophy office tower it bought in Atlanta to the giant Sapphire Wind Farm in Australia.
Oh, yeah.
It also broke ground on its North American headquarters in the Interlocken Advanced Technology Environment business park. Interlocken is roughly 5,172 miles from Baar.
One of the reasons the Partners Group chose this site for its new North American headquarters is because Interlocken reminded the board of the Partners Group of Switzerland, where the Partners Group is based.
The campus, designed by Open Studio Architecture, is expected to open in 2019.
The first phase of the $40 million campus will have 92,290 square feet in three office buildings and 55,849 sf for a parking structure.
The developer of the Partners Group campus is Prime West Development. The general contractor is Swinerton Builders.
Pamela Alsterlind
Pamela Alsterlind, a partner with the Partners Group, last week answered some questions by email from Rebchook Real Estate Corner.
Rebchook: When did the Partners Group start its search for its North American headquarters?
Alsterlind: The search started in the fall of 2014 when our board of directors decided to underline our commitment to the Americas by investing in the design and construction of a U.S. headquarters.
Rebchook: How did Partners Group do its due diligence in researching cities?
Alsterlind: Our approach to business is to get on a plane ourselves and go and see our clients and management teams on their home territory, wherever that might be, rather than ask them come to us. So it was important to us that our new office be in a fairly central location with good air transport links, but other than that we were open to other factors and looked at seven cities across the U.S. before settling on Denver.
Rebchook: What were the factors that made the Partners Group choose the Denver area? DIA? Workforce? Quality of life?
Alsterlind: We chose the Denver metro area for our new headquarters because it not only had the excellent national and international connectivity we were looking for, along with a business-friendly government, but it also offered a great quality of life for our employees.
Unlike many firms in our industry of private markets investment, we did not feel that we needed to base our U.S. headquarters close to financial or political centers.
The nature of our business is to invest in attractive companies and assets all across the Americas, on behalf of a client base that is also spread across the country.
Rebchook: How many sites in the Denver area did the Partners Group consider before choosing Bromfield?
Alsterlind: We looked at all the different business parks and business nodes within the Denver area and decided on Broomfield because of its location between Denver and Boulder. Within Broomfield itself, we looked at a total of five lots and settled on this one because of the Interlocken business park and also because there are some clear parallels with Partners Group’s home country of Switzerland – most obviously the beautiful view of the mountains in the distance.
Rebchook: Is there room to grow on the site?
Alsterlind: The site itself is 25.12 acres so, yes, there is room to construct other buildings on the site at a later date. Our ambition is to bring a unique campus culture to the heart of our Americas business, and this location allows us the space and the freedom to be able to do that.
Rebchook: What are some of the energy-saving and sustainable features of the buildings? Will it be LEED certified, for example?
Alsterlind: There will definitely be a sustainability focus with these buildings, but we can’t be more specific than that right now – happy to come back to on this at a later date.
Rebchook: Is Partners Group looking to add to its workforce and, if so, how many people and in what areas will it be hiring?
Alsterlind: Yes. We are already at more than 100 employees in our temporary office in downtown Denver, which is more than double our initial expectations. The new campus, which will open in 2019, will be capable of accommodating several hundred employees. We are hiring across all business lines, from servicing institutional clients, to sourcing and executing investments, to carrying out corporate functions.
Rebchook: Thanks, Pamela.
