SL Green Gets $86M Loan for Stamford's Landmark Square

December 22, 2011
By Nicholas Ziegler, News Editor

SL Green Realty Corp., with Cushman & Wakefield Sonnenblick Goldman acting as its adviser, just received an $86 million senior mortgage for Landmark Square in Stamford, Conn. The five-year fixed-rate financing was provided by AIG Asset Management on behalf of a wholly owned life-insurance subside of American International Group Inc.

SL Green, which has owned the property since 2007, is in the midst of a major capital-improvement plan that includes plaza landscaping, renovated elevators and the installation of a health club. Steven Kohn, president of C&WSB, called Landmark Square “one of the truly premiere properties in Stamford,” noting that the area features 826,000 square feet of mixed-use space across a 7.16 acre campus in the city’s Central Business District. The campus has seven buildings, including a nine-screen movie theatre.

Fairfield County, where Stamford is located, sits less than 40 miles from Midtown Manhattan and has seen significant improvement in its commercial real estate market over the past year. Average asking rents rose by $0.54 from the third quarter of 2010 to the third quarter of 2011, reaching $35.55 per square foot, according to a report by CBRE Group Inc. Lease expansions are the hot commodity, as Robert Caruso, senior managing director of CBRE’s Westchester/Fairfield operations, noted. “Expansions accounted for 50 percent of [the third quarter’s] leasing activity, which is a vast improvement when compared to the 20 percent it has been averaging so far this year.”

SL Green has also been busy in the nearby Manhattan market, with its latest $80 million purchase of 51 E. 42nd St. in Midtown giving the firm the entire New York block that is bounded by Madison and Vanderbilt Avenues between East 42nd and East 43rd Streets.