Downtown Brooklyn=Midtown South?

NEW YORK CITY—Massey Knakal Realty Services has been tapped exclusively to sell 180 Livingston St. in Downtown Brooklyn.The class A office property—which sits between Smith and Hoyt streets in the Tech Triangle—features more than 165,000 square feet of rentable space and another 142,00-plus square feet of air rights with the use of an inclusionary housing bonus.

The asking price for the asset is about $100 million. Published reports question the number but Massey Knakal partner Stephen Palmese, who is marketing the property, contends to GlobeSt.com that several factors add up the number being perfectly logical.

“For a more than 250,000-square foot office space—which net construction costs will put you into the property at $500 per square foot—that's a good number in what's equivalent to a Midtown South market.”

But how does the nation's hottest submarket equate to the popular but still burgeoning Brooklyn? “I think everyone is comparing Brooklyn's Downtown Tech Triangle and what's happening in Dumbo to Midtown South. Both areas are getting the same tenants; the TAMI companies.”

Plus, he continues. “None of the tenants coming into the Tech Triangle, like ETSY or Genius (an online annotation firm), are traditional Class B tenants. The area is getting rents of $45 to $65 per square foot and there are reports of $90 per-square foot prices being achieved at the Empire Stores project in DUMBO.

“If that's true, and the tenant demand stays strong, then the comparison between the two markets makes sense; the only thing different is the buildings.”

180 Livingston Street is surrounded by some of the largest private and public development projects in all of New York City, including City Point, Pacific Park, Avalon Willoughby Square, and the many redevelopments of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Its location features nine subway lines within three blocks and access to the Long Island Rail Road as well as four additional subway lines within a half-mile.