Mack-Cali sells pair of downtown White Plains office buildings for $16 million

Mack-Cali Realty Corp. has sold a pair of downtown White Plains office buildings on Barker Avenue in separate deals totaling $16 million, continuing the company”™s exit from the city’s office market.

County property records show the six-story, 68,000-square-foot 1 Barker Ave. office building sold for $9.3 million. The deed was recorded Sept. 13. The same day, a separate deed recorded the $6.7 million sale of the six-story, 65,300-square-foot building at 3 Barker Ave. 

The buyers are two separate LLCs ”” 1 Barker Ave. LLC and 3 Barker Ave. LLC ”” that share an address in Spring Valley. The properties will be managed by Spring Valley’s Exclusive Management.

Exclusive Management last year applied to the White Plains Common Council, along with Street-Works Development, for approval of a residential and retail redevelopment proposal for the 3-acre mall White Plains Mall property on Hamilton Avenue across the street from the Barker Avenue buildings. The redevelopment plans were approve earlier in September.

For Mack-Cali, the sale follows an $83 million deal where the company sold the Westchester Financial Center, two office buildings comprising about 570,000 square feet on Main Street and Martine Avenue in White Plains. The buyers, Ginsburg Development Cos. with Robert Martin Co., are planning to convert the site into a mix of apartments, green space, restaurants, retail and renovated offices.

The Barker Avenue and Westchester Financial Center deals effectively mark the end of Mack-Cali”™s two-decade presence in the White Plains office market. The Edison, New Jersey-based company is reportedly pursuing a residential conversion of its final White Plains office holding at 1 Water St.

Deidre Crockett, senior vice president of corporate communications for Mack-Cali, said the sale is “in line with our overall disposition plan which we started back in 2015… we are focused on key transit-oriented markets in New Jersey, particularly our holdings on the New Jersey waterfront, where our corporate office resides.”

The company sold more than $500 million in assets last year, with another $400 million planned for 2018, Mack-Cali reported in its 2017 annual report.

In the 2017 annual report, filed with the SEC in late February, Mack-Cali reported the 1 Barker Ave. building as 87 percent leased and the 3 Barker Ave. building as 70.9 percent leased.

The building at 1 Barker Ave. was built in 1975, according to Mack-Cali’s filing, with 3 Barker Ave. opening about a decade later in 1983. Mack-Cali picked up both buildings in 1997, when the company was just Cali Realty Corp. The buildings moved as part of a $440 million deal in which Cali took over 65 properties from Robert Martin Co. totaling almost 5 million square feet. Cali Realty Corp. became Mack-Cali a year later though a billion-dollar merger with fellow New Jersey firm Mack Co.

The 1 Barker Ave. building sold individually for $9.4 million at the time, according to county property records. Next door, 3 Barker Ave. sold for just under $7 million in 1997.

Mack-Cali”™s holdings in Westchester County still include the Cross Westchester Executive Park flex office space in Elmsford; warehouse and distribution space at the Elmsford Distribution Center; flex-space at the Mid-Westchester Executive Park in Hawthorne and office space at the South Westchester Executive Park in Yonkers.