Antares Pays Record $130M for UST Building

Cushman & Wakefield of Connecticut reports that UST has signed a definitive agreement to sell its 160,000-sf headquarters building at 100 West Putnam Ave. to Antares Investment Partners for $130 million. C&W officials who worked on the deal say that the sale will be the highest price ever paid for a vacant property in Fairfield County. According to a UST announcement, the sale is expected to close in about a month.

UST intends to relocate approximately 350 of its employee, who are currently housed at the 100 West Putnam Ave. complex, to its new 140,000-sf leased space at 6 High Ridge Park in Stamford, CT by this September.

The sale of the property is part of UST's cost cutting initiative coined "Project Momentum." Murray Kessler, UST president and CEO, in a prepared statement concerning the building sale, says, "As part of Project Momentum, our goal was to sell our building to unlock its considerable value to benefit shareholders, and that has clearly occurred. We are pleased with the terms and speed at which the agreement was reached."

As GlobeSt.com reported, C&W began marketing the property in December. The property was expected to attract significant investor interest since rents in the Greenwich market are fetching between $90 to $100 a sf on average.

The property consists of three buildings, the main headquarters building which totals 148,803 sf; the 3,206-sf Museum Building and a 6,268-sf office building at 17 Field Point Rd.

The main building was built in 1970 with the additions completed in 1982.

Paul Kauffman, Andrew Merin, Gary Gabriel and Patrick Colwell of C&W, represented the seller and procured the buyer.

"The completion of this transaction demonstrates the strength and demand of the Greenwich office market," Kauffman says. "The building was on the market for a short amount of time and generated an enormous response from the investment community. We achieved a record sale price for an unoccupied asset."

Merin adds, "The sale of 100 West Putnam Ave. offered UST the opportunity to take advantage of the favorable capital markets. It was also an occasion for a savvy investor like Antares to obtain a class A property in a submarket with one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country."