KGAL buys Bonn office scheme for green fund

German closed-end fund manager KGAL said on Monday that it has made the first investment on behalf of its EUR 500 mln Spezialfonds KGAL/HI Sustainable Office Fund with the purchase of the Rheinwerk 2 environmentally sustainable office complex in Bonn.

The fund, which represents a joint venture of KGAL with Hansainvest Hanseatische Investment, has bought the 16,300-m² asset from Rheinwerk 2 GmbH, a partnership of project developers BonnVisio, Renum and ProBonnum. The companies agreed not to disclose the transaction price.

Completed in 2009, the scheme is part of the 48,500-m² Bonner Bogen urban development project located on the banks of the Rhine river. The property is let to a total of 19 tenants with a weighted average rental term of 7.5 years. It includes 300 parking spaces and boasts a 'Silver' rating under DGNB green standards.

The asset forms the seed portfolio for KGAL/HI Sustainable Office Fund, a new investment vehicle which focuses on environmentally certified core and core-plus office properties in up to 12 selected German cities including Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Stuttgart, Bonn, Bremen, Essen, Hannover and Wiesbaden. The fund, which has a war chest of some EUR 500 mln, is dedicated to institutional investors, insurance companies and pension funds.

'We see the ecological sustainability of our objects as a reliable basis for the economic stability of the investment,' said Dieter Weiß, managing director of KGAL.