MetLife takes out $144M mortgage on Wells Fargo Center

Wells Fargo Center
Wells Fargo Center

MetLife, owner of the Wells Fargo Center in downtown Miami, has taken out a $144.4 million mortgage on the 47-story tower.

Bank of America is the lender, mortgage documents show.

One of downtown Miami’s most prominent office towers, the Wells Fargo Center at 333 Southeast Second Avenue adjoins the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel.

Built in 2010, the office building’s tenants include Greenberg Traurig; McDermott, Will & Emery; Deloitte; Silversea Cruises; and GrayRobinson. The tower has 752,488 square feet of office space, according to its website.

The MDM Group developed the Metropolitan Miami project, which includes Met 1; Met 2 with the JW Marriott Marquis Miami and Hotel Beaux Arts and Wells Fargo Center; and Met 3 and the Whole Foods Market. It is also developing Met Square, which will feature a movie theater, restaurants, retail and residences.

MDM’s joint venture partner on the Wells Fargo Center was MetLife, which took full ownership in 2011.

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MDM also plans to develop the Marriott Marquis World Convention Center, an 1,800-room hotel and 600,000-square-foot convention facility on the site of the old Miami Arena, and adjacent to the Miami Worldcenter and All Aboard Florida projects.

Miami-Dade property records show the Wells Fargo Center is owned by Met II Office LLC. The borrower on the mortgage is MCPP WFC Miami LLC. The Delaware entity lists and address in Morristown, N.J., MetLife’s real estate investments headquarters.

Signers on the mortgage documents include representatives for Met II Office LLC and Met II Office Mezzanine LLC, which link back to MetLife. According to its website, MetLife oversees a $62.7 billion real estate investment portfolio, one of the largest in the United States.

Commercial Mortgage Alert wrote in July that MetLife was seeking up to $1 billion in fixed and floating-rate debt on nine office properties across the U.S. The buildings, totaling 5.1 million square feet, included the 1.1 million-square-foot Terraces complex in Atlanta and the 618,000-square-foot PNC Center in Chicago, in addition to the Wells Fargo Center in Miami.