Brookfield Sells Manhattan Building at $100M Discount

March 19, 2025

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The property’s new owner is a longtime New York City electronics retailer.

As Brookfield Properties looks to deploy capital toward high-performing assets elsewhere in its portfolio, it has sold 333 W. 34th St., a 10-story, 346,728-square-foot office building in Manhattan for $150 million, about $105 million or 60 percent less than it paid for the property in 2018.

333 W. 34th St., a 10-story office building in Manhattan. *Image courtesy of CommercialEdge*

The building, located in Manhattan’s Times Square-Hell’s Kitchen submarket, has 30,000 square feet of street-level retail that had been the home of longtime music store Sam Ash until the chain closed all its locations last year. The retail space may come in handy for the new buyer, which is said to be iconic New York City electronics retailer B&H Photo.

Several media outlets reported B&H purchased the property from Brookfield. It’s not clear yet whether the retailer would move from its current site around the corner at 420 Ninth Ave. or expand at the new location, but a Brookfield spokesperson referred to the property as the buyer’s future home in comments to Crain’s New York Business.

The buyer’s identity was a mystery for a short time because the sale, which became public Monday, was made to SV333 Realty LLC, according to the New York Business Journal. Sources confirmed to Crain’s and The Real Deal a day later that the buyer was B&H.

Brookfield acquired the property, built in 1954, in January 2018 for $255 million from New York REIT as part of its liquidation. The REIT had announced in November 2017 that it was selling the office building to funds managed by Brookfield. Brookfield had secured a $130 million loan in January 2018 to purchase the property from German bank Landesbank Baden-Württemberg. Brookfield had refinanced the loan for $105 million with Landesbank two years ago, according to the business journal.

Previous owners of the westside building include SL Green Realty, which sold the property to New York REIT in August 2013 for $220.2 million. SL Green acquired the asset from Citigroup in June 2007 for $183 million.

The building has about 98 percent occupancy. Godiva Chocolatier leases 42,290 square feet of office space on the sixth floor, CommercialEdge data shows. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is another tenant with at least 100,000 square feet, according to media reports.

Leasing activity at other properties

Elsewhere in New York City, Brookfield has been busy inking lease deals with tenants at several of its high-profile office towers. Last month, quantitative trading firm Jane Street Capital renewed and expanded its lease at 250 Vesey St. in Lower Manhattan to nearly 1 million square feet, according to published reports. Jane Street has been a tenant at the office property, part of the Brookfield Place complex, since 2014.

Also last month, Amazon partnered with WeWork to lease an additional 112,000 square feet at 5 Manhattan West, a 1.8 million-square-foot building that is part of Brookfield’s Manhattan West portfolio in Chelsea. The new sublease takes Amazon’s space in the building up to 472,000 square feet. WeWork will operate the space for Amazon.

In November, Brookfield tapped JLL as the exclusive leasing agent for Manhattan West’s office component, which spans four towers and 6 million square feet at the 7 million-square-foot mixed-use campus on the far west side of Manhattan.

Last fall, Macquarie Group opened its new 250,000-square-foot office at 660 Fifth Ave., a 1.5 million-square-foot recently renovated tower in Manhattan’s Plaza District. The company occupies six floors at the 39-story high-rise.

Manhattan office market sees strong leasing

The Manhattan office market finished 2024 on a strong note with fourth-quarter leasing totaling 6.7 million square feet. It was the highest quarterly total since the third quarter of 2022 and 6.3 percent higher than the 10-year quarterly average, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s latest Manhattan report.

The strong fourth quarter brought annual leasing to 23.4 million square feet, up 30.2 percent year-over-year. Cushman & Wakefield noted there were 23 new leases and expansions greater than 100,000 in 2024, up from 16 in 2023.