Duke Realty Completes $1.1B Sale of Office Portfolio in Triangle, Three Other Markets

by Adriana Pop, Associate Editor

Duke Realty Corp. has closed on the previously announced $1.12 billion disposition of its entire office portfolio in the Triangle and three other markets, including Nashville, St. Louis and South Florida.

In an off-market transaction, a joint venture between Starwood Global Opportunity Fund X, Vanderbilt Partners and Trinity Capital Advisors has acquired 62 of the company’s wholly-owned suburban office properties, which offer a total of 6.9 million square feet and 57 acres of undeveloped land.

The portfolio, which had an average occupancy rate of 90 percent at the time of sale, included 24 buildings in Morrisville, Raleigh and Cary; 15 buildings in St. Louis; 14 buildings in Nashville, Tenn.; as well as nine buildings in South Florida. The undeveloped land is located at Perimeter Park in Morrisville and in South Florida.

The transaction is in line with Duke Realty’s long-term strategy to focus on industrial and medical office assets, while exiting many of its suburban office markets. According to the Triangle Business Journal, the company will continue to manage the 3 million square feet of industrial buildings and medical office buildings it owns in the Triangle area.

“We believe that we are at an attractive point in the cycle to enter suburban office markets that are well-positioned for growth, and we will continue to seek out investments in the sector on an opportunistic basis,” Christopher Graham, senior managing director and head of Real Estate Acquisitions for the Americas at Starwood Capital Group, said in a news release.

Since it was founded in 1991, Starwood Capital Group has acquired more than 60 million square feet of office properties around the world, and currently manages approximately 35 million square feet.

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