Cushman & Wakefield Facilitates $299M Sale of N.J. Office Assets

By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor

70 & 90 Hudson St., Jersey City, N.J.

New York—Gramercy Property Trust has closed on the disposition of 70 Hudson St. and 90 Hudson St., two Jersey City, N.J., office properties totaling nearly 858,000 square feet, for a total of $299 million—the largest New Jersey office deal of the year so far.

A Cushman & Wakefield team led by Andrew Merin, David Bernhaut, Gary Gabriel, Brian Whitmer, Kyle Schmidt and Andrew MacDonald in the firm’s East Rutherford, N.J.-based Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group represented Gramercy in the transaction. The same team also procured the buyer, Spear Street Capital of San Francisco.

The 409,272-square-foot building at 70 Hudson St. was vacant at the time of sale, following the departure of full-building tenant Barclay’s. Cushman & Wakefield’s Robert Lowe, Edward Duenas and Jim McCaffrey are handling leasing for the 12-story asset.

“This is the only office availability greater than 200,000 square feet and the largest contiguous availability along the Hudson Waterfront,” Andrew Merin said in a prepared statement. “The new ownership will be able to capitalize on the market’s strong leasing momentum and cyclically improving rents compared to Manhattan.”

The 12-story, 448,668-square-foot 90 Hudson St. was fully leased at the time of sale by tenants such as Lord, Abbett & Co. and Charles Komar & Sons.

The sale is the latest of Gramercy’s strategic plan to dispose of select single- and multi-tenant office assets. To date, the company has disposed of approximately $500.8 million of single- and multi-tenant office assets at a 5.4 percent exit cap rate.

For the latest deal, the total sale proceeds and weighted average cap rate reflect 100 percent of the sale and NOI value of the Weston Portfolio, in which Gramercy’s held an 80 percent joint venture interest.

Before the closing took place, Gramercy prepaid the mortgage debt attributable to 70 Hudson and the buyer assumed the outstanding loan of $101 million on 90 Hudson. The former building was vacant at the time of the sale and the exit cap rate was 6.6 percent on stabilized 2016 cash NOI for 90 Hudson, taking into account a free rent credit. Net proceeds to the company equate to $184.8 million.

According to latest company report, it has approximately $145.5 million in additional gross asset sales under contract that are expected to close by the end of the first quarter 2016 and another approximately $285.8 million of assets currently in the market and expected to close in the first half of 2016.