American Greetings Moving to Westlake

CLEVELAND—American Greetings, the world's largest greeting card company, has spent generations at its world headquarters in suburban Brooklyn, but after several years of strategizing it's finally ready to begin moving to a more efficient, 600,000-square-foot space in nearby Westlake. The company just sold its 1.6-million-square-foot Brooklyn campus to Industrial Realty Group, which plans to transform 150-acre site into a multi-tenant property. According to Cuyahoga County records, the property was sold for $15.5 million.

Cleveland-based Allegro Realty Advisors facilitated the transaction and helped American Greetings negotiate a flexible lease which will allow it, and other third-party tenants, to stay in Brooklyn until 2016. “This deal will provide IRG with cash flow, and keep the property stable while they look for more tenants,” Allegro managing director and principal Michael Cantor tells GlobeSt.com.

As reported in GlobeSt.com, the card company has planned a move to Westlake for several years. And in the fall of 2011, it first hired Allegro to help determine how to dispose of the old headquarters. About one-third of it is comprised of warehouse space, and it also includes a four-story office building and a separate, one-story executive office building.

Although the sprawling American Greetings campus is no longer fully-efficient as a corporate headquarters, “this is a property that lends itself to multitenant use,” Allegro principal George Hutchinson, director of corporate services, tells GlobeSt.com, especially since it has about 50 acres still open for new development. “And IRG has a track record of buying large properties and upgrading them and turning them into multitenant properties.”