Brookdale Revealed as Buyer of 777 Main in Fort Worth

January 8, 2015

Featured Investment News OfficeMoreSouth

A local Fort Worth newspaper reported that the Brookdale Group was the unnamed buyer of the 980,000-square-foot office tower in downtown Fort Worth, sold by Cousins Properties amid a tenant lawsuit.

By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor

The Brookdale Group acquired 777 Main st., a 980,000-square-foot, Class A office tower in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, from Cousins Properties for $167 million.

Although the buyer was not named at the time of the sale, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that the Brookdale Group was the buyer. The Atlanta-based commercial real estate firm was named in a lawsuit filed in Tarrant County by Petroleum Exploration Co., a building tenant that is currently suing Cousins for breach of contract and fraud for not completing promised renovations to its 27th floor space.

HFF represented the seller in the transaction. HFF’s debt placement team also secured acquisition financing on behalf of the new owner through a global financial services firm.

The building is a 40-story office tower located near Sundance Square, a 35-block commercial, residential, entertainment and retail district. It has a top-floor restaurant, The Petroleum Club, a fine dining restaurant, a fitness center and a state-of-the-art conference center in the lobby.

The 777 Main St. building includes a tenant roster of Jacobs Engineering, FTSI, Hallmark Financial Services, Enduro, XTO and Frost Bank.

Cousins originally acquired the property for $160 million in September 2013 as part of its Crescent Texas acquisition, which included the 4.3-million-square-foot Greenway Plaza office complex in Houston.

The Fort Worth office market has been hot of late. Moody’s Analytics forecasts a 3.9 percent growth in 2015 and 3.7 percent growth in 2016 for the Fort Worth metro division.

In CBRE’s third quarter office market report of the Fort Worth area revealed net absorption throughout the DFW office market continued to trend positively for the 17th consecutive quarter dating to third quarter of 2010. Additionally, market-wide vacancy declined in the third quarter of 2014 with an 18.2 percent vacancy rate, six months after vacancy dipped below 18 percent for the first time since 2008.