Westchester County”™s oldest high-rise office building, the 21-story, 41-year-old Westchester One at 44 S. Broadway in downtown White Plains, has been sold by its Boston-based owner for $138 million.
The recently closed deal additionally included the $9 million sale of a 437-space parking garage serving Westchester One tenants at 120 Westchester Ave.
The seller, Beacon Capital Partners, paid $172.5 million for the 852,000-square-foot, Class A office tower in 2006, when commercial office properties commanded peak prices before the credit market crisis and Great Recession. In its only Westchester investment, Beacon also paid $9 million at the time for the 120 Westchester Ave. parking garage.
The White Plains Central Business District properties were sold to Beacon by their original owner, Bianco & Pepe, the Scarsdale company that built and in 1976 opened what was then said to be, at 202 feet, the tallest office building between Albany and New York City.
Beacon Capital Partners subsequently embarked on a $13 million capital project to reposition the property. Those renovations brought Westchester One the Office Building of the Year Award in 2008 from the Building Owners and Managers Association of Westchester County.
Principals behind the building”™s new ownership, 44 South Broadway Owner LLC, have not been disclosed. Registered in Delaware, the limited liability company on deed documents lists an in-care-of address on Brooklyn”™s Flatbush Avenue that is the office of E&M Associates, a company that invests in and manages multifamily residential properties with a portfolio of more than 3,000 apartments within New York City.
E&M Associates did not return a call from the Business Journal on Thursday morning.
One of Westchester One”™s new tenants is New York Life Insurance Co., which this year is relocating its Westchester headquarters and about 500 employees from Sleepy Hollow to approximately 150,000 square feet of space on the top four floors at 44 S. Broadway.
With the Westchester One sale, Beacon Capital Partners has sold 11 of the 12 office properties it once owned in New York City and Westchester.
