Nuveen teams up with Taconic on ABC campus buy

Silverstein Properties is selling West Side properties for $230M

From left: Taconic co-CEOs Charles Bendit and Paul Pariser, 125 West End Avenue, and Nuveen's Mike Sales (Credit: Taconic, Google Maps, and Nuveen)
From left: Taconic co-CEOs Charles Bendit and Paul Pariser, 125 West End Avenue, and Nuveen's Mike Sales (Credit: Taconic, Google Maps, and Nuveen)

Nuveen is joining Taconic Investment Partners on its $230 million purchase of a portion of Silverstein Properties’ ABC campus on the Upper West Side.

Nuveen, the real estate investment arm of the TIAA pension fund, and Taconic signed a hard contract Monday to buy the three-property “West End Campus,” sources familiar with the transaction told The Real Deal.

The two partners are in talks with Deutsche Bank for a loan to finance the acquisition.

Representatives for Nuveen and Taconic did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

A team of brokers at Eastdil Secured including Gary Phillips, Brett Siegel and Jeff Organisciak brokered the sale on behalf of Silverstein Properties. The brokers declined to comment. Commercial Observer first reported last week that Taconic was buying the properties.

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Taconic and Nuveen are purchasing the three properties through a fund they administer together. The two last year partnered to buy the Hell’s Kitchen office building at 440 Ninth Avenue from Unizo Holdings for $269 million.

And they also co-own the Greenwich Village office building at 817 Broadway, which they bought alongside Squire Investments in 2016 for $109 million.

The new owners plan to convert one of the properties – an office building at 125 West End Avenue – into space for life-sciences tenants. It’s not clear what the plans were for the other two properties: studio space in a building at 320 West 66th Street and a property known as Lot 61.

The West End Campus properties are under a two-year sale-leaseback agreement with ABC, so they’ll become available more quickly than the others Silverstein acquired last year as part of its $1.2 billion purchase of the campus. Those properties are under lease for five years.