Align Buys Comcast Office Center for $59M

Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, L.P. (HFF) announced that it has brokered the sale of the Comcast Office Center campus in Livermore, California that serves as the regional headquarters for the cable company. HFF represented the seller in the transaction, Gramercy Property Trust, which originally acquired the property in June 2009 for $49 million. The three building portfolio was sold to San Francisco-based Align Real Estate for $59 million. The sale is part of Gramercy's previously announced plan to dispose of select single and multi-tenant office assets, which has so far disposed of approximately $722.5 million of single and multi-tenant office assets at a weighted average 6.1% exit cap rate.

The Comcast Office Center was 100% triple net leased to Comcast at the time of sale. Located at 3011, 3055 and 3077 Comcast Place in the Tri-Valley Technology Park, the Comcast Office Center is a 26-acre office campus that includes two single-story buildings and one two-story office building less than one mile north of the I-580 freeway, the primary transportation artery in the submarket. Comcast consolidated its operations from multiple facilities in the Tri-Valley area in the late 2000s so that the campus would serve as Comcast's regional headquarters, call center, and technical operations center. The campus is within 10 minutes of the Pleasanton BART station servicing San Francisco and the greater Bay Area and close to the future Livermore BART station and planned surrounding developments.

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SF's 235 Pine Trades Hands

235 Pine Street in San Francisco traded hands this month as a fund managed by CBRE Global Investors purchased the office property for a reported $88.8 million, or $591 per square foot, according to The Registry. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Built in 1990, the property features 207,500 square feet on 25 stories, is located in the heart of San Francisco's Financial District between California and Market streets near amenities including restaurants, gyms and public transportation.

235 Pine is currently home to the soon-to-be-vacating GSA Bankruptcy Court, the buyer confirmed. Phil Hench, principal at CBRE Global Investors, said the company saw the Pine Street building as a valuable asset not only because of its proximity to BART, but also because the bankruptcy court will soon give up its more than 50,000 square feet on the top six floors.

"The traditional (finance, insurance and real estate)-type users that went through a difficult period of downsizing – and since then have been status quo and haven't added jobs or space – are in fact expected to recover and accelerate," he said. "We'll see a lot of activity from that sector, and at the same time more and more of these tech companies are not afraid to go into traditional vertical highrise office buildings."

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.