OneRepublic frontman buys a Walgreens building on Las Vegas Strip
OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder has performed in Las Vegas for years, giving him a close-up view of the valley’s growth.
He’s also crunched the numbers and, with partners, spent more than $130 million on commercial real estate here the past few years — and his latest purchase has made him a landlord on the Strip.
Tedder confirmed Tuesday he teamed up to buy the Walgreens building across from Park MGM, and that his investors on the deal included DJ duo the Chainsmokers.
The $38 million sale by Walgreen Co., which bought the building in June from its former landlord for $30 million and flipped it, closed last month, property records show.
Drugstores on tourist-choked Las Vegas Boulevard are big business, commanding outsize rents, strong retail sales and, as the recent purchase shows, high property values.
‘Very methodical’
Tedder told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he has bought property around the U.S., including an American Airlines call center in North Carolina, and that his investment group is “very methodical.” His group has looked at population and income growth, the costs of developing versus buying a building, and other data that real estate investors typically analyze.
In the music business, Tedder said, people get a cut of every dollar he makes.
“With my real estate portfolio, nobody touches it,” he said.
He also said Las Vegas — now home to major league sports and several billion-dollar real estate projects — has a “palpable” buzz to it.
Illinois-based Walgreen Co. had listed its 15,000-square-foot building on Las Vegas Boulevard between Tropicana and Harmon avenues for $40 million.
The pharmacy giant declined to comment on the sale.
Attempts to speak with the Chainsmokers, who perform at Wynn Resorts’ XS nightclub and Encore Beach Club, were unsuccessful Tuesday.
Office deals
Tedder, whose deals in Las Vegas were handled by New York broker and investor Keith Kantrowitz, started buying commercial property in Southern Nevada in early 2018, when his group picked up an office building in the southwest valley and a nearby parking lot for $33 million.
Later that year, the group also bought an office building just south of McCarran International Airport for $30.75 million and a commercial building in the northwest valley for just over $9 million.
More recently, Tedder’s group purchased an office building in Henderson for $19.45 million in November. It was more than 90 percent occupied, according to listing broker Marlene Fujita of Cushman & Wakefield.
Tedder confirmed all the transactions and said, “We probably looked at 10 times that amount.”
Las Vegas’ office market was clobbered by last decade’s real estate collapse as unemployment soared and buildings emptied. But amid the improved job market, occupancy has climbed, and Tedder and other landlords have scooped up buildings.
A lack of new supply helps limit their competition. Developers have drawn up plans for new projects and built corporate offices in recent years. But overall, Cushman broker Charles Moore said, Las Vegas hasn’t seen much speculative office construction lately.
Tedder, a Grammy-winning songwriter and producer, noted that copyrights expire, and he wants to buy physical assets that can be passed to heirs.
Plus, there will come a day he doesn’t want to tour or perhaps crank out hits, he said, and at that point, his real estate income will “vastly exceed anything I made in music.”
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.
