Brookfield Pockets $128M for Brooklyn Office Condo

Twelve MetroTech Center

Brookfield Properties has finalized the sale of a 186,000-square-foot office condominium within Twelve MetroTech Center, a 30-story building in downtown Brooklyn, N.Y. A joint venture between 60 Guilders and a hedge fund paid $128 million for the Class A asset, financing the purchase with a $106 million loan from Starwood Property Trust. Cushman & Wakefield negotiated the deal and secured the five-year, interest-only acquisition financing, while Cole Schotz PC provided legal representation for the buyer.

First announced in May, the transaction is the largest office sale to close in Brooklyn since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to CommercialEdge information. In the second-largest deal, Nightingale Properties paid $112.1 million for the Whale Square building, a 400,000-square-foot creative office asset, in October 2020.

Completed in 2002, Twelve MetroTech Center rises at 330 Jay St. in an Opportunity Zone. The office condo occupies the top five floors of the building, while the lower 25 floors are owned by the City of New York, housing the Kings County Family Court. The condo component has a separate lobby and elevator core, the result of a “building within a building” design.

Inside Brooklyn’s MetroTech Center

Considered one of the nation’s largest urban academic-industrial research parks, MetroTech Center consists of a 16-acre superblock located near Brooklyn’s Civic Center and Brooklyn Heights. Forest City Enterprises developed the business and educational campus as a multi-building office property totaling some 5.5 million square feet, also including street-level retail and the 3.5-acre Brooklyn Commons Park.

The $1 billion project took about 14 years to complete. The campus is home to major companies and organizations such as JPMorgan Chase, National Grid, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, The New York City Fire Department and Slate Media, as well as Brookfield’s Orchard Workspace.

In 2018, Brookfield became the owner of MetroTech Center following the $11.4 billion acquisition of Forest City Realty Trust. The company’s portfolio at the time included 6.3 million square feet of office space, 2.3 million square feet of life science assets, 2.2 million square feet of retail and 18,500 multifamily units.

Brokers and legal representation

Cushman & Wakefield’s Doug Harmon, Adam Spies, Adam Doneger, Dan OBrien, Rachel Humphrey and Meaghan Philbin arranged the office condo sale. Harmon and Spies also represented SL Green in the recent $790 million sale of a 49 percent stake in 220 E. 42nd St. in Manhattan.

In addition, an Equity, Debt & Structured Finance team including Gideon Gil, Lauren Kaufman, Steve Kohn and Alex Hernandez procured acquisition financing for the joint venture.

Led by Leo Leyva, the Cole Schotz team also included Jordan Fisch, Chris Caslin, Jennifer Horowitz, Jan Alan Lewis, Alan Rubin and Matthew Schneid, together with associates Drew Barone, Samantha Epstein and Rimma Tsvasman and paralegal Kim McEllen.