DATE: Saturday, November 29, 1997           TAG: 9711290234

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARIAN ANDERFUREN, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   55 lines

REAL ESTATE TRUST BUYS GREENBRIER TOWERS $16 MILLION PURCHASE SIGNALS MARKET ENTRANCE.

Greenbrier Towers, the twin office buildings in Chesapeake's Greenbrier section, have been sold to Parkway Properties Inc. for about $16 million - close to the asking price of $16.5 million.

The towers were sold by Prudential Life Insurance Co., which acquired the property in 1995 through foreclosure.

Built in 1985 and 1987, the six-story towers are the city's tallest office buildings. Each has close to 90,000 square feet, with building-height atriums.

The Class A towers, with top-of-the-line amenities and average rents for upscale suburban office space, are about 98 percent occupied, according to Parkway. The lease rate is $16 per square foot. Larger tenants include Pagenet, the Cousteau Society, Consumer Portfolio Services and the city's economic development office.

The towers are Parkway's first Hampton Roads property. The Jackson, Miss.-based real estate investment trust - or REIT - also owns several properties in Northern Virginia, but it is looking to exit that market, according to Jack Sullenberger, senior vice president.

``Washington, D.C., got very expensive,'' he said Friday. ``We bid on 30 properties last year and didn't get them. So we decided to sell and invest in other areas.''

He said Parkway, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, is considering properties not only in Hampton Roads, but also in Richmond.

``After we have accumulated 300,000 to a half-million square feet in a market, we open a management office and run them out of that office,'' Sullenberger said.

For now, however, Robinson Sigma will continue to manage the towers for Parkway.

The Greenbrier Towers were an attractive buy for Parkway, said President and CEO Steven G. Rogers. ``We are pleased to make an entrance into this new market, which has the fourth-largest metropolitan statistical area in the southeastern United States,'' he said.

``We've been impressed with the Chesapeake market,'' said Sullenberger. ``It seemed to be an up-and-coming area. There's not a lot of quantity of buildings in that area, but from all of our interviews with tenants, this was the best.''

REITs bought a record $11.3 billion of commercial properties in the third quarter, up from $6.6 billion a year earlier, Bloomberg News Service reported. They are on pace to buy $35 million worth of property this year.

Industry observers say the strong economy has led to low vacancy rates and higher rents, making office buildings a good buy for REITs. In the past six months, Hampton Roads has become a target of the trusts because many of the premium buildings in other, larger cities are close to being bought up.

A Raleigh-based REIT, Highwoods Properties Inc., has announced plans to build a speculative office building in Virginia Beach and buy a building in the Riverside Corporate Center near Military Highway and Interstate 64 in Norfolk.

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