"It's safe to say new investors are looking at Tulsa," Jack Crews, principal with Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co., tells GlobeSt.com, "and there are more investors looking at Tulsa than a year ago. It's not for everybody because not everybody has secondary cities on their radar screen."

Crews has a laundry list of reasons to buy in Tulsa in addition to the 550,122-sf, 13-building TechRidge Office Park at 9726 E. 42nd St. that he has listed for nearly $45 million. He's been educating institutional clients as he makes his rounds with the listing, likening it to Dallas but on a smaller scale. "Tulsa's a high-quality, highly educated city," he says. "It's being looked at by investors as a safe place to put their money." He says the challenge with TechRidge isn't the quality or the location, but rather the park's size, which is large by any city's standards.

Whether it's TechRidge or another property, experts near and far say the appeal is the immediate cash flow and appreciation in value due to normal growth without the downside of development. The 21-million-sf office market's class A office space is 95% filled at an average rate of $16 per sf. And what is on the ground is tightly compacted with no new development on the horizon.

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"We like that market. We like that market a lot more than when we started this process," says Michael McQuay, also a Principle partner. "It's a less risky environment and stable returns over time instead of banking on some upside."

It's also recognized that the sale price when it's time to exit most likely won't be substantially more than was paid in the beginning. "But, there's no 10-year horizon before you see a return on your investment," Randy McQuay explains. "You realize a return almost immediately." The plan with the purchase, being picked up from Phoenix-based Voit Commercial, is a 10-year hold.

Not only does Principle have the 91%-leased One Summit Plaza ready to close, but it's going to cross the finish line with a brand-new, 22,000-sf tenant. Michael McQuay says the Bank of Oklahoma has inked a 10-year lease to move its headquarters from One Williams Center to the top floor of the eight-story One Summit Plaza, getting first-floor retail space with a drive-through window and its name on the building to sweeten the deal. "That speaks volumes for the market and that building," he says.

Two years ago in a one-off transaction, the New York City-based Somerset Partners bought 424 units, renovated and re-branded the asset as Somerset Park at Union. "We didn't go specifically looking for Tulsa, but we liked the opportunity," says Philip Welch, Somerset's managing partner. "Once we invested in it, we thought the local market was due to turn around and it seems to be turning around. Job growth is on the rise."

Michael Bryant, senior vice president in Dallas for Capmark Finance Inc., says multifamily investors clearly have been following the road to Tulsa. In the past year, a half dozen, quality properties have been cleared for financing from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. "As an alternative market, in the last 12 months to 18 months, we've done more deals there than we've done in the past five years in Tulsa," he says. "It's an emerging market and an alternative investment market for investors who've been putting money into the major markets of Texas."

In recent years, the city has landed a half dozen call centers and Vanguard Car Rental USA Inc.'s headquarters move from Fort Lauderdale. "I think the city's done a good job from an economic perspective of selling itself," Bryant says. "Many institutions have started to study it and allocate to it. Most have really re-examined Tulsa and a quarter of them has opened their capital expenditure allocation to Tulsa."

Patrick Coates of local firm Coates Commercial LLC says the buying scenario really started to change when a California investment group scooped up the 770,000-sf Williams Center I and II from Chicago-based Trizec Properties Inc. Before that, the city had been grappling with near back-to-back losses when oil company giants moved their headquarters to Houston and the Tampa-based MCI Worldcom disappeared. "The good news is several spin-off companies have resulted," Coates says. "I think we are on our way back." In recent weeks, Capital One has signed a 93,000-sf lease to add to the list of call centers in the city.

Among the pending projects is a $180-million casino resort being planned by the Creek Nation and the final word on a mixed-use plan by out-of-state partners who spent $110 million late last year for a handful of class B and C buildings in the Downtown. On the retail side, a Dallas-based developer is planning a large project beside the five-month-old Bass Pro store in Broken Arrow, just eight miles from Tulsa's CBD. And a Tucson developer reportedly is poised to buy and flip the 709,857-sf Eastland Mall, turning it over to another for conversion into office and call center space.

"There's been a lot of activity in the past year," Coates says. "A lot of properties have traded to people outside our market. Most of the interest is coming into a market where the cap rates are higher. Out-of-state investors have been invading Tulsa."

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