Hines, Oaktree Capital Management Make $93M Arlington Deal

Two Liberty Center. Image courtesy of JLL

Working on behalf of Westbrook Partners, JLL recently completed the disposition of Two Liberty Center in Arlington, Va. In addition to orchestrating the $93.2 million sale of the 178,700-square-foot office building, JLL arranged financing totaling $67.6 million for the buyer, a joint venture of Hines and funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management LP.

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HFF had taken on the job of marketing Two Liberty Center before the firm became one with JLL in a $1.8 billion merger transaction that closed July 1, 2019. Carrying the address of 4075 Wilson Blvd. in Arlington’s Ballston submarket, Two Liberty is part of the 2.2 million-square-foot Liberty Square mixed-used project developed by Fred Schnider Investment Group, The Shooshan Co. and Clark Enterprises.

The nine-story building, which includes 13,000 square feet of ground-level retail offerings and a 280-space subterranean parking facility, first opened its doors in 2007 and underwent a repositioning in January 2019. Today, the property is 95 percent leased, with a 16-business tenant roster featuring such names as Strategic Analysis and Franchise Information Services, as well as Fred Schnider and Shooshan.

The JLL Capital Markets team that represented Westbrook in the sale transaction–Andrew Weir, Jim Meisel, Matthew Nicholson, David Baker and Stephen Conley—includes some of the same names that stood in for Fred Schnider et al when they sold the property to Westbrook in 2017 for $72 million. A former HFF team also arranged financing for Westbrook at the time. On the most recent trade, the firm pulled double duty once again, this time, with JLL Capital Markets’ Susan Carras, Rob Carey and Drake Greer laying the groundwork for Bank of America to provide the Hines-Oaktree joint venture with acquisition financing in the form of a seven-year, floating-rate loan.

Northern Virginia rising

Office sales activity in Northern Virginia has been on an upswing of late. According to a report by Newmark Knight Frank, the strong pace of investment sales volume recorded in the second quarter of 2019—four major transactions totaling roughly $265 million–is on track to continue or even increase. The anticipated activity is due in no small part to the area’s heightened desirability, driven by Amazon’s new multi-billion-dollar HQ2 headquarters campus project in Arlington.

Transactions in Northern Virginia during the third quarter have included Maguire Hayden Real Estate Co.’s $43.4 million sale of a five-building office and flex/industrial portfolio at Avion Business Park in Chantilly to Minkoff Development. The collection of buildings includes two office structures totaling 114,000 square feet. Also, in a deal initiated by HFF, JLL closed the $153 million  sale of One Liberty Center, an approximately 320,000-square-foot office tower at the mixed-use Liberty Center in Arlington, on behalf of Carr Properties. JLL also arranged financing for the buyer, USAA Real Estate.