Brill Building set to hit market: sources

Dallas-based real estate giant Invesco is preparing to bring an historic Times Square office building to market, The Real Deal has learned.

The international investment management firm’s real estate arm will likely put the property known as the Brill Building, at 1619 Broadway, on the market early next year, sources said. The 11-story building, on the corner of West 49th Street, totals 177,000 square feet and is best known for its musical history; the building served as the Tin Pan Alley home of famed music publishers, record companies, artists and artists’ managers for decades beginning in the 1930s. It became known as a hit factory, producing songs by artists such as Paul Simon.

The building last traded hands in 2007, when Invesco and Ofer Yardeni’s Stonehenge Partners purchased it for $151 million from Murray Hill Properties and Westbrook Partners. Murray Hill and Westbrook had previously bought it for $89.1 million from AVR Partners. It was not immediately clear why the current owners are looking to sell. Invesco declined to comment. Stonehenge was not immediately available for comment.

Sources told The Real Deal that Invesco has already selected a broker to manage the sale. The company has previously worked with large firms such as Eastdil Secured. Eastdil’s Adam Spies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s been a tough year for the building’s tenants. The post-production house Sound One, which occupied a significant portion of the buildings office space, closed its doors earlier this fall citing difficult market conditions in New York. Also this year, the building’s retail tenant Colony Record, a famed source of sheet music and music memorabilia, closed after 60 years at the property. It appears the building’s other primary tenant, Broadway Entertainment, is still in place.

The Brill Building is named after one of its first tenants – the Brill brothers – whose clothing store occupied the ground-floor retail when it first opened, in 1931.

As The Real Deal previously reported, the city’s $100 million-plus investment sales market has been heating up. A host of properties asking upwards of that price point have hit the market in recent months. In one recent deal, Normandy Real Estate Partners purchased a 275,000-square-foot office building at 1370 Broadway for $125 millions. The sellers were Sitt Asset Management and Carlton Associates.