Wells Core Income REIT has acquired the Franklin Center, a 200,600-square-foot office building in the Baltimore submarket of Columbia, Md., from Principal Real Estate Investors.

Building on its “longstanding relationship with J.P. Morgan,” services firm Cassidy Turley has just landed a contract to lease and manage 2.5 million square feet of office space at Dallas’ Fountain Place and Houston’s Post Oak Central.

On behalf of a separate-account client, real estate investment manager Clarion Partners has acquired two adjoining office buildings in Boston’s Back Bay for $87.1 million. The 13-story buildings total 184,000 square feet.

In a sale arranged by real estate investment banking firm Savills, one of the firm’s institutional-investor clients picked up the Springhurst Towne Center, an 830,000-square-foot retail complex in Louisville, for $78 million.

Near the close of yesterday’s markets, Jamestown Properties and Rockwood Capital announced the $390 million acquisition of 530 Fifth Ave. — also known as the Bank of New York Building — which is soon to undergo a $20 million renovation to bring the property to Class A standards.

Novaya Real Estate Ventures, not yet one month old, has begun to build its portfolio with the acquisition of two office/R&D buildings featuring an aggregate 146,700 square feet in suburban Boston.

Omninet Capital has closed on the purchase of Commerce Office Park, a 285,368-square-foot institutional-quality office campus at South Eastern and East Slauson avenues in Commerce, Calif.

“Debt” is going to be the name of the game for the European real estate markets in 2012, according to Emerging Trends in Real Estate Europe 2012, the industry forecast published by PwC and the Urban Land Institute.

Jones Lang LaSalle has acquired Sydney-based tenant advisory firm MPS Properties, adding approximately 43 million square feet of Australian office space to the company’s management rolls.

Three real estate industry veterans have joined forces on the launching of a new services firm, Serten Advisors, designed to provide commercial real estate services exclusively to tenants in metropolitan Washington, D.C.