Brookfield Office Properties Inc. has sold 53 State Street in Boston for $610 million. The building, also known as Exchange Place, was constructed in 1985 on the site of the Boston Stock Exchange site. It contains 1.1 million sq. ft. of space and boasts The Blackstone Group as a major tenant.
It is the second large disposition by the firm in recent months. The company also sold Newport Tower, a 1.1-million-sq.-ft. high-rise office tower in Jersey City, for $377.5 million to Multi-Employer Property Trust (MEPT) and its real estate advisor, Bentall Kennedy in October.
Brookfield Office’s parent, Brookfield Asset Management, has focused on distressed assets of late.
"This disposition continues our active capital recycling program in which we have sold $682 million of net assets over the last 12+ months, reinvesting the same amount of capital into new opportunistic investments," Dennis Friedrich, president and global chief investment officer of Brookfield Office Properties, said in a statement.
In other Brookfield news, Brookfield Office Properties Canada, announced the execution of a new financing on its Bay Adelaide Centre West Tower for $405 million, for a 10-year term at a fixed rate of 4.426 percent. The new loan was used to repay the existing construction financing of $405 million.
The trust also announced that it has received the requisite authorization from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to list its units, subject to regulatory approval, on the NYSE under the ticker symbol "BOXC." It is anticipated that the trust units will begin trading on the NYSE in mid-January 2012.