Barings buying Sixth Avenue office tower for $160M

Barings has negotiated a $160 million deal to buy the office building at 1370 Sixth Avenue, where the investment firm’s parent company holds the mortgage on the 34-story tower.

The real estate arm of investment giant Mass Mutual is buying the 70s-era office building from Principal Real Estate Investors, The Real Deal has learned.

A Newmark team led by Adam Spies, Adam Doneger and Josh King negotiated the sale. The brokers declined to comment.

Principal Real Estate, part of the $19 billion Iowa-based Principal Financial Group, had put the building up for sale and accepted offers from bidders that included equity funds, private investors and owner-occupiers, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

The top bids had requested some form of financing from Barings, and when the firm looked at the offers it decided it would rather purchase the building itself, sources said.

Representatives for Barings and Principal Real Estate Advisors did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

The 330,000-square-foot building is about 85 percent leased with a mix of asset management firms in the tower. The lower portion of the building had traditionally been showrooms for shoe companies like Vince Camuto and Steve Madden. 

Principal Real Estate paid $217 million in 2005 to buy the building at the corner of 56th Street from Normandy Real Estate Partners and The Landis Group. The firm refinanced the tower in 2014 with a $150 million loan from Mass Mutual.

The Mike Freno-led Barings had more than $13 billion worth of U.S. real estate assets under management at the end of 2022. Last spring, the firm announced it had closed a $680 million fund to invest in life sciences and STEM office properties. As of late last year the Barings was also raising a $1 billion real estate debt fund.

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