EAST HANOVER, NJ—Griffin Capital Corporation's Essential Asset REIT, sold the Eagle Rock Executive Office Center IV in East Hanover, NJ to Boxer F3 LLC, a value add multi-tenant office buyer, for $10.95 million.

The property is a 177,820-square-foot, class A office building 15 miles northwest of Newark. This acquisition marks Houston-based Boxer's entrance into the New Jersey market. Eagle Rock Executive Office IV was constructed in 1990 and features a granite and reflective glass curtain wall façade, a two-story atrium lobby, a full service cafeteria, and adjacent pond with fountains.

"I am excited for Boxer to enter the NJ market with such a high quality building,” says Brad Nichol, director of acquisitions for Boxer. “With a solid base of international tenants, the building presents a stable platform for Boxer to increase value through our superior management and leasing teams.”

El Segundo, CA-based Griffin, a publicly registered non-traded REIT with a portfolio that currently includes 58 office and industrial distribution properties totaling approximately 13 million rentable square feet and total capitalization of over $2.3 billion, originally acquired the property in November 2013 as part of a larger transaction where the allocated acquisition price was $6.5 million. Three lease transactions were completed during the year of ownership raising occupancy from 35% to 41% and stabilizing near term rollover.

"This sale of Eagle Rock represents the execution of a strategy we put in place when it was acquired as part of an 18-property portfolio transaction,” says Scott Tausk, Griffin Capital's managing director of asset management. “Because the property did not fit the REIT's single tenant, essential asset investment criteria, our asset management team created a short-term value creation business plan, executed that plan and divested the asset at a profit, all within thirteen months—we are very pleased with this transaction and will strive to replicate these results as similar opportunities arise."

"Although the majority of our investment strategies focus on the acquisition and ownership of single tenant assets, from time to time we do acquire multi-tenant assets as part of portfolio transactions,” says Mike Escalante, Griffin Capital's chief investment officer. “Eagle Rock is one such asset, and we are pleased we were able to add value during our brief ownership."

Founded in 1992, Boxer Property is a private firm based in Houston with more than 18 million square feet of commercial real estate nationwide.