Kushner, RFR look to refi Dumbo Heights campus

Kushner Companies and RFR Realty are back in the market to refinance their Dumbo Heights office campus.

The joint venture is soliciting interest for a five-year, fixed- or floating-rate loan with interest-only payments for the five-building Brooklyn spread, the Commercial Observer reported. The refinancing would fund closing costs and contractual obligations tied to Etsy, which has anchored the campus since 2015 and renewed its headquarters there through 2039. 

Other tenants include Bluestone Lane, Randolph Beer, Springbone Kitchen and Ippudo.

The office campus at 117 Adams Street, 55 Prospect Street and 77 Sands Street has 663,000 square feet of rentable space. The weighted average remaining lease is 11.5 years and 12 percent of the net rentable area will see lease expirations in the next five years.

CBRE Capital Markets’ James Millon and Tom Traynor are on the debt assignment. Bids to refinance the campus are due later this month. Neither of the landlords returned the outlet’s request for comment about the hunt for refinancing.

The office campus secured a $480 million loan to refinance in 2018 from Citi Real Estate Finance, replacing a $425 million loan issued by the bank the previous year.  

In 2017, Kushner and RFR led a buyout of Invesco’s 90 percent stake in the campus. Following the deal, Kushner and RFR each owned 47.5 percent interests in Dumbo Heights; LIVWRK owned the remaining portion.

With the onset of the pandemic, the joint venture was forced to deal with both tightening margins and the desire of WeWork to cut its rents by as much as 30 percent across its locations. It’s unclear how the issue was resolved, but WeWork is still operating its 72,000-square-foot space at 77 Sands Street.

— Holden Walter-Warner