American Landmark enters NYC with $200M Fort Greene ground lease buy

American Landmark Properties, owner of Chicago’s Willis Tower, has inked a deal for its first New York City acquisition: the ground lease for a 10-story office building at 470 Vanderbilt Avenue in Fort Greene, Crain’s reported.

GFI Development sold the lease controlling the 650,000-square-foot building for $200 million. The land is owned by the estate of the late Sol Goldman. GFI bought the lease in 2007 for about $45 million, less than a quarter of what American Landmark is paying today.

In 2011, GFI leased some 400,000 square feet on six floors of the building to the city’s Human Resources Administration for 20 years, after years of struggling to find tenants.

Doug Harmon and Adam Spies of Eastdil Secured arranged the sale for GFI.

American Landmark based the decision to make the deal on Brooklyn’s increasing popularity as an office neighborhood for tech tenants and other creative companies, according to sources familiar with the deal cited by Crain’s. [Crain’s] — Julie Strickland