SL Green Strikes $275M Manhattan Office Deal

Tower 46. Image via Google Street View

A fund managed by Brookfield Asset Management has agreed to buy a stake in a Midtown Manhattan office tower from SL Green Realty Corp. for $275 million, as institutional investors continue to seek well-located, Class A properties in the city.

Through the deal, SL Green will sell its 25 percent interest in Tower 46, consisting of the commercial condominium portion of the building at 55 West 46th St., and will receive around $20 million in cash. The gross valuation of $275 million amounts to $793 per square foot for the 348,000-square-foot Diamond District property.

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“Tower 46 is well-positioned for today’s environment as a recently constructed, centrally located office building in Midtown Manhattan,” commented Ben Brown, managing partner at Brookfield Property Group, to Commercial Property Executive. “This transaction represents an opportunity to acquire a prime asset at a highly attractive basis and drive return through Brookfield’s operating platform.”

Diamond District condos

SL Green, which currently owns interests in some 28.6 million square feet of Manhattan buildings, picked up the asset in partnership with Prudential Real Estate Investors for $295 million in 2014. The property includes office floors 2 and 22 through 34 of Extell Development’s International Gem Tower, a glass-enclosed tower built in 2012 that also houses gem industry condo floors with a separate entrance at 50 W. 47th St.  

SL Green later acquired a retail store on 46th Street and the building’s fitness center and underground parking garage. The Tower 46 office space has lured tenants including hedge fund Fir Tree, which signed a lease for 31,126 square feet in 2015; law firm Nixon Peabody, which leased 66,297 square feet in 2016; and Comcast, which took 45,045 square feet at around the same time. Other tenants include Everest Reinsurance, Millburn Ridgefield Corp. and TravelClick.

The sale represents a step in SL Green’s strategy to divest of non-core assets and reinvest the capital into the firm’s share repurchase program, the company said in a prepared statement. SL Green agreed to sell 410 Tenth Ave., its high-rise office redevelopment project in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards area, for $925.5 million last November. The announcement followed the opening of One Vanderbilt, the city’s second-tallest skyscraper, by SL Green and Hines last September.

Hodges Ward Elliott’s Paul Gillen, Anthony Ledesma and Kyle van Buitenen represented SL Green in the Tower 46 sale.

Brookfield grows in Midtown

Canadian investment giant Brookfield Asset Management, which has $600 billion in assets under management, is a major player in New York City’s commercial real estate landscape. The company’s Midtown portfolio encompasses 11 properties totaling 13.8 million square feet, including the New York Times Building, 1100 Avenue of the Americas and the Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech.

Last month, Brookfield Asset Management along with a group of investors announced it had offered to acquire the remaining shares it did not already own in Brookfield Property Partners. The $5.9 billion bid would take the listed real estate company private. Brookfield Asset Management already owns about 60 percent of Brookfield Property Partners, according to Bloomberg.