HFF’s Two-Fer in $368M NJ Office Deal

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

Short Hills, N.J.—As part of a major office portfolio transaction in which it represented the seller, HFF also secured $124.5 million in financing for a big chunk of the deal, HFF announced late last week.

101 John F. Kennedy Parkway in Short Hills, N.J

The portfolio sale, as Commercial Property Executive reported in March, totaled about 1.1 million square feet and sold for $368 million, making it one of the biggest office portfolio deals in New Jersey’s history.

The financing that HFF arranged was specifically for three of the six office buildings in the deal: 51, 101 and 103 John F. Kennedy Parkway in Short Hills, N.J., which total 564,000 square feet. The buildings are directly across John F. Kennedy Parkway from the 1.3-million-square-foot Mall at Short Hills.

HFF worked on behalf of the borrower/buyer, Mack-Cali Realty Corp., to place the 10-year, fixed-rate loan through Citi and Goldman Sachs & Co.

The seller of all six properties was RXR Realty. The other three properties are in Madison, N.J.

The Short Hills properties, which are in the Route 24 Corridor, were built between 1981 and 1988 and are fully leased to major tenants, including KPMG, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, Dun & Bradstreet and Investors Bank.

The HFF debt placement team representing Mack-Cali was led by Senior Managing Director Jon Mikula, who in a prepared statement called the Short Hills assets “some of the premier Class A office buildings in the state.”

Michael DeMarco, Mack-Cali president added, “This transaction exemplifies our strategy of owning only the best assets in strong markets that offer tenants state-of-the-art office spaces with a suite of first-class amenities.”

Mack-Cali also owns 150 JFK Parkway, on the other side of the street and barely a quarter-mile east. That building is home to the New Jersey offices of Roseland Residential Trust, a Mack-Cali subsidiary.

This portfolio purchase is part of a surge of activity by Mack-Cali in New Jersey. At the beginning of February, the company tagged HFF to start marketing a 26-building, 1.2-million-square-foot portfolio of office and flex space in Moorestown and Burlington townships. And in January, Mack-Cali announced that HFF would represent it in the disposition of nine Class A office properties totaling 2.2 million square feet, in Bergen County.

Image courtesy of Yardi Matrix