The sale follows another recent $300-plus per-sf deal in the form of Mack-Cali Realty Corp.'s acquisition last year of the 42-story, 1.2-million-sf 101 Hudson St. here for $329 per sf. The seller in that case was a partnership led by LCOR.

But 101 Hudson St. is on this city's Hudson River waterfront, where "pricey" is a standard adjective. Two Montgomery St. is located within the Exchange Place submarket, away from the waterfront.

One of the major attractions for the Greenwich, CT-based Rockwood Capital Corp. and the New York-based Onyx Equities is that the building is fully leased on a long-term basis to MetLife. It also sits atop the Exchange Place PATH light rail station.

"This offering presented a unique opportunity to acquire a trophy office building in a market that sees very little investor trades," says David Bernhaut of Cushman & Wakefield's Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group. Bernhaut led the team that orchestrated the sale on behalf of both the buyers and the Houston-based seller.

"Given the unprecedented investment sales climate in New Jersey, Hines took advantage of the current conditions to achieve very aggressive pricing at 2 Montgomery St.," Bernhaut says. "The Rockwood partnership saw the long-term value of MetLife's occupancy, as well as the potential for future redevelopment of the property, considering its irreplaceable location."

That location referenced is between the waterfront and this city's older Downtown area. Much of the development that has occurred in the submarket has been tied to the PATH station as a mass transit link between this city, Newark and Lower Manhattan. Bernhaut's group at C&W specializes in real estate investment banking in Northern New Jersey; Fairfield County, CT; and New York's Long Island and Westchester County.