Brookfield to sell DoBro office condo for $130M

60 Guilders, Davidson Kempner in contract on one of Brooklyn’s biggest office deals

60 Guilders' Kevin Chisholm, Brookfield's Brian Kingston and 12 Metrotech. (Brookfield, Chisholm ph: Larry Ford)
60 Guilders' Kevin Chisholm, Brookfield's Brian Kingston and 12 Metrotech. (Brookfield, Chisholm ph: Larry Ford)

Brookfield Property Partners is selling an office property in Downtown Brooklyn for $130 million — one of the borough’s first big office sales since the start of the pandemic.

A partnership between 60 Guilders and the hedge fund Davidson Kempner is in contract to buy an office condominium at the 12 Metrotech building in Brookfield’s office complex, sources told The Real Deal.

The contract price for the 186,000-square-foot office condo values the property at nearly $700 per square foot — giving investors an indication of the current value of Brooklyn commercial real estate as the city recovers from the pandemic.

Representatives for Brookfield and Davidson Kempner Capital Management declined to comment, and 60 Guilders did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The property was marketed by a Cushman & Wakefield team led by Adam Spies and Adam Doneger, who declined to comment.

Brookfield acquired the office condo at the top of 12 Metrotech via its $6.8 billion purchase in 2018 of Forest City Realty Trust, which developed the 5.5 million-square-foot Metrotech Center in the 1980s.

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The condo spans seven floors at the top of the 30-story tower and is leased to the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, which in 2019 leased 140,000 square feet for 20 years. The lower 25 floors of the building are owned by the city and house Kings County Family Court.

Kevin Chisholm and Bastien Broda’s 60 Guilders owns office properties in Manhattan and Long Island City, but this appears to be its first office purchase in Brooklyn. In 2017, the investors bought a Sunset Park industrial property for $47 million.

Davidson Kempner last year bought a $100 million piece of debt on Savanna’s One Court Square office tower in Long Island City from SL Green Realty for about 95 cents on the dollar in a deal negotiated by the same Cushman team.

The deal for 12 Metrotech comes as Brooklyn’s office market struggles to rebound. Leasing activity during the first quarter was 43 percent below the borough’s five-year average, according to CBRE. The borough added 177,000 more square feet of space than tenants absorbed during the quarter, pushing the availability rate up near 23 percent.

Amid those disappointing numbers, Downtown Brooklyn did better than the borough’s other commercial neighborhoods. The largest new lease of the quarter was at Brookfield’s 15 Metrotech: a 51,000-square-foot deal for JLL’s flexible-office platform Orchard Workspace.