🚧 Intelligent Real Estate Investments - Hines

Hines’ European Development Fund Signs Lease with DIA Group for Tripark Las Rozas in Madrid

(MADRID, SPAIN) – The Madrid office of Hines, the international real estate firm, announced today that the DIA Group supermarket chain has signed a long-term lease for 112,765 square feet of office space and will occupy a full building in Hines’ recently completed Tripark Las Rozas business park in northwest Madrid.

The lease, which is the first signed for the project, represents 30 percent of the space available in the complex.

DIA Group will take occupancy of its new home in June 2010, consolidating employees from two locations in Madrid’s Central Business District AZCA area into what will become their new headquarters.

Designed by renowned Spanish architects Allende Arquitectos, Tripark Las Rozas contains three four-story buildings totaling 351,875 square feet of Class A office space.

The buildings are situated at a highly visible intersection of the A-6 motorway and the M-50 ring road.

The development is currently pre-certified LEED® Silver by the U.S. Green Building Council.

“Securing such a significant lease with such a prestigious company is an excellent way to start 2010,” said Fernando Arenas, managing director for Hines in Spain.

“We believe that this deal demonstrates that despite difficult market conditions, the quality and sustainable features of the project have been recognized.”

Tripark Las Rozas offers the highest level of sustainable benefits in the Spanish market, including 30 percent in water consumption savings, 26 percent less electricity consumption and a reduction in CO2 emissions equivalent to planting 750 trees every year.

“We have conceived this new generation of business parks to enhance the working environment and wellbeing of our tenants, and to reduce the development’s environmental impact.

These are critical issues for our tenants,” Arenas added.

Francisco del Dedo represented DIA Group in lease negotiations, and José Miguel Setién of Jones Lang LaSalle, the development’s exclusive leasing agent, represented the Hines European Development Fund.

DIA is a distribution chain founded in Spain in 1979 on the opening of its first store in Madrid. Consolidated as the leader and a reference in the distribution sector, the DIA Group is a Spanish multi-national which, since 2000, has been integratedwithin the International Carrefour Group – thefirst distribution group in Europe and thesecondworldwide witha gross turnover of 108,629 million Euros, a presencein 33 countries, and employing approximately 495,000 people.

Hines entered the Spanish market with a strategic investment in Barcelona in 1995.

That investment, known as Diagonal Mar, centered on 84 acres of land fronting the Mediterranean Sea. The project is one of Europe’s largest mixed-use developments totaling over four million square feet consisting of a retail and leisure center, five residential phases, three hotels, three office buildings and the third-largest public park in Barcelona.

In 2000, Hines expanded its operations in Spain by opening a Madrid office, and in 2004, a Marbella office.

Today, Hines Spain has over 25 employees involved in development, leasing, financing and asset management.