A Boston-based real estate fund quietly invested $19 million in four commercial buildings in Norwalk in a possible joint venture with a local developer as overall activity in the sector continued to lurch back into motion.
An entity called MCP SP West Avenue L.L.C. bought buildings at 520, 605 and 698 West Ave. in Norwalk, which mostly house several offices for multiple companies and medical groups, as well as a fourth property at 26 Lynes Place. The West Avenue properties have been owned and managed by Stanley M. Seligson Properties, which as of mid-July still listed the properties on its website.
The identity of MCP could not be immediately established. Marcus Partners, a major owner of commercial real estate in Norwalk, runs a $250 million real estate investment vehicle dubbed the Marcus Capital Partners Fund and has used the initials MCP in reference to affiliate vehicles. Representatives from Marcus Partners and Stanley M. Seligson Partners did not immediately return calls to provide information on the properties; at deadline, no company had issued a public statement on the investment.
In May, Marcus Partners was a party in one of the largest commercial real estate transfers in Fairfield County during the past several years, after Clarion Partners helped a pension fund acquire an ownership stake in the 1.4 million-square-foot Merritt 7 Corporate Park in Norwalk, bringing in Marcus Partners to oversee management of the facility.
In April, Marcus Partners acquired a half-dozen office buildings in Atlanta totaling nearly 190,000 square feet.
The company traces its history through David Marcus Partners, which split last year to form Marcus Partners and The Davis Cos., with the two entities still listing joint ownership of properties in their portfolio prior to the division. At last count, that portfolio totaled 4 million square feet of space in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Florida.
If the new MCP purchase represents a fraction of that amount, it nevertheless is only the latest commercial real estate transaction in Fairfield County following the market lull in 2009 and much of 2010. Last month, CB Richard Ellis brokered the $17 million sale of 750 E. Main St. in Stamford to an entity controlled by New York City-based Aegean Capital L.L.C. The 103,000-square-foot building is 63 percent leased. CB Richard Ellis broker Jeff Dunne said the company received 30 offers for the property and that the deal was the county”™s first instance of a “real-estate owned” transaction in which a commercial building passes back to a mortgage lender after an unsuccessful foreclosure auction.
The sales activity comes even as the Fairfield County market tightened by 215,000 square feet in the second quarter, as calculated by Norwalk-based RHYS Commercial Real Estate. As first reported by the Fairfield County Business Journal entering July, that gain was entirely the result of Westport-based Bridgewater Associates moving into massive new offices at 20 Westport Road in Wilton, which RHYS stated is a sublease totaling more than 225,000 square feet of space. That nearly quadrupled the size of the next largest deal, that of the AQR hedge fund which renewed a lease at 2 Greenwich Plaza in Greenwich for nearly 60,000 square feet of space. According to RHYS CEO Cory Gubner, the Fairfield County market saw a larger number of lease deals totaling at least 20,000 square feet ”“ welcome news for landlords who are saddled with more than 11 million square feet of available space for an availability rate of some 21 percent of the total office market.
