GHP Office Realty is the buyer for SL Green”™s former office properties at 115-117 Stevens Ave. in Valhalla. The property, with two building”™s totaling about 183,000 square feet, went for $12 million in a deal first announced by the seller in April.
CBRE Group, Inc. announced on May 7 that GHP, a West Harrison-based office owner and operator, acquired the two Stevens Avenue buildings. CBRE represented SL Green and procured the buyer.
SL Green originally disclosed last month it had sold the property, along with its Reckson Executive Park at 1-6 International Ave. in Rye Brook, in deals involving two separate buyers for a total of $67 million. The company did not disclose either buyer at the time.
The three-story 115 Stevens Ave. building includes 130,630 square feet of office space. The 117 Stevens Ave. building is two stories, consisting of 52,000 square fee. Each building has a parking garage and outdoor visitor parking. CBRE described the properties as having recently received capital improvements, including improved amenity spaces.
Andrew Greenspan, principal at GHP, put the deal in the context of other Westchester County office purchases the company had made. “We”™re at this point primarily focused in Westchester County,” Greenspan said. “In part because we are headquartered here, we”™re able to be very proactive and hands-on.”
Last March, the company paid $30 million for a six-story, 280,000-square-foot building at 660 White Plains Road in the Tarrytown Corporate Center. Other recent large Westchester deals include the purchase of an 80,000-square-foot flex warehouse in Elmsford at 375 Executive Blvd. and of 2649-2651 Strang Blvd., a 209,000 square foot office and medical campus in Yorktown Heights that GHP acquired for a reported $11 million in 2014.
In all, the company said it owns, manages and leases approximately 1.8 million square feet in the region. The Stevens Avenue buildings offered a chance to expand upon that portfolio.
“These were two suburban offices in central Westchester, and we felt the opportunity was too good to pass up,” Greenspan said. “Our headquarters is just a few minutes down the road and we think we can do a very good job operating it.”
Tenants at the 115 Stevens Ave. building include Retriever Medical Dental Payments, Inc., a payment card processing and Technology company; Archcare, the healthcare arm of the Archdiocese of New York; Cardinal McCloskey Community Services, a nonprofit social service provider to needy adults and children and Utopus Insights, an independent energy analytics company spun out of IBM”™s Smarter Energy Research division.
CBRE said in the press release that GHP will invest $3.5 million in the building at 117 Stevens Ave. to create new lobbies and accommodate small-user tenants.
“The tightening Westchester County office market, driven by the adaptive repurposing of older office product, and the increased demand stemming from Westchester”™s cluster of biotech and healthcare businesses, bodes well for GHP to lease space at 115-117 Stevens Avenue,” said Jeffrey Dunne, a vice chairman at CBRE.
Dunne”™s team on the deal at CBRE included Steven Bardsley and Stuart MacKenzie of CBRE”™s Institutional Properties Group and William V. Cuddy Jr. of CBRE”™s Advisory & Transaction Services Group.
SL Green owned the Stevens Avenue property through Reckson, its suburban division acquired in a $4 billion merger with Reckson Associates Realty Corp. in 2006.
The publicly traded SL Green said the deal was part of a $1.5 billion stock repurchase plan. The 115-117 Stevens Ave. transaction combined with the $55 million sale of Reckson Executive Park to a still undisclosed buyer and a $633 million sale of an office condominium property in midtown Manhattan to create about $190 million in net proceeds toward the stock repurchase, the company said in April.
SL Green”™s remaining properties in Westchester are the three-building The Summit office park at 100-500 Summit Lake Drive in Valhalla, and the 385,000-square-foot Reckson Metro Center at 360 Hamilton Ave. in downtown White Plains. The company also owns the seven-building Landmark Square office complex in Stamford.
GHP Office Realty is a division of Houlihan-Parnes Realtors LLC.
