NEW YORK CITY — SL Green Realty Corp. has entered into an agreement to acquire 600 Lexington Avenue from an affiliate of Hines for $193 million. The Class A tower contains 303,515 square feet of space over 36 floors. Occupancy currently stands at 93.6 percent but approximately 54 percent of the leases are set to expire during the next 3 years. SL Green plans to use this opportunity to launch a targeting leasing and marketing campaign with the goal of repositioning the building.
In a statement, SL Green CEO Marc Holliday said, “Recent improvements in New York City office fundamentals, coupled with improvements in the credit markets, have resulted in the New York City real estate market beginning to open up after 2 years, in which there has been a dearth of institutional-quality offerings. We have worked hard to build our cash position in order to be able to take advantage of opportunities quickly as the market recovers. With that in mind, we moved aggressively to lock up this opportunity, and there exists a strong likelihood that we will be able to attract a joint venture partner on this asset.”
As part of the transaction, SL Green will assume $49.85 million worth of in-place financing. The loan carries a 5.74 percent rate with interest-only payments and matures in March 2014. Law firm Greenberg Traurig represented SL Green in the transaction. CB Richard Ellis represented Hines.
— Coleman Wood