Starwood sells Plantation office buildings in $78M deal

Starwood Capital sold several buildings within a Plantation office park for $78 million, as uncertainty continues to surround the sector.

Companies affiliated with New York-based real estate merchant bank Island Capital Group, led by Andrew Farkas, bought the buildings at 8201 Peters Road, 8221 Peters Road, 8151 Peters Road and 8050 Southwest 10th Street, within the Crossroads Business Park, according to records.

Starwood, led by Barry Sternlicht, spent about $60 million on the properties in 2015. It spent $20.5 million in a deal that included 8201 Peters and 8221 Peters. It paid $21.3 million for 8050 Southwest 10th Street, and it paid $18.5 million for 8151 Peters, records show.

In the latest sale, the buyers — companies affiliated with Island Capital and its subsidiary C-III, based in Irving, Texas — paid $25.8 million for the 100,000-square-foot building at 8050 Southwest 10th Street, built in 2001.

The buyers paid $26.5 million for the building at 8151 Peters, also called Crossroads II and built in 1999. Crossroads II is home to an office for the Morgan & Morgan law firm, a branch of Caliber Home Loans and the headquarters of The Responsive Auto Insurance Company, according to their websites. The four-story building has space for rent for $24 a square foot a year, according to an online listing.

The buyers also paid $26.1 million for the bank drive-thru at 8221 Peters, built in 2001, and the 100,000-square-foot 8201 Peters building, also known as Crossroads I. Crossroads I is home to a Regus coworking location and home to offices for Wealth Innovations, Kimley-Horn, Gordon & Partners and Contax360 BPO Solutions, according to their websites.

In October, Starwood Retail Partners gave up one of its suburban Chicago malls, handing over the keys to its lender after first defaulting on a loan payment in the spring.

The move came two months after parent company Starwood Capital Group lost control of a seven-property regional mall portfolio.

Also in October, Starwood Capital Group secured $265 million in refinancing for a portfolio of 58 extended-stay and midscale hotels nationwide, representing a fraction of all the hotels it owns and operates.

During its third quarter earnings call last month, Starwood reported profit of $151.8 million, up 8 percent from the same period of 2019.

At the time, Sternlicht told analysts that he is confident the hotel and office markets will come back to pre-pandemic levels, saying that adults and kids “want to go back to the lives they had before.”

A recent report by Cushman and Wakefield predicted that the office market won’t reach pre-Covid levels until 2025, with office vacancies across the world continuing upward, reaching 15.6 percent in 2022.