The pending sale is part of the play-out of Reckson's pendingacquisition by SL Green for $6 billion, as reported by GlobeSt.com.As part of that acquisition, the latter will flip more than $2billion of suburban properties back to an investor group puttogether by Reckson chairman Scott Rechler and backed by MarathonAsset Management. The Rechler group has hired Cushman &Wakefield to find a buyer for the half-dozen properties that thegroup has apparently decided to sell.

"It's a standard portfolio trimming or culling that a lot ofREITs do," Andrew Merin, vice chairman of Cushman & Wakefieldand head of its Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group, tellsGlobeSt.com. "And I think, for Reckson, it's a course of actionwhether or not the SL Green transaction had happened. One of theassets we're selling, we had on the market three years ago butpulled it back. Before this whole SL Green thing happened, we wereabout to go into the market with that asset again anyhow."

Bids were due yesterday, according to Merin, "and I wouldsuspect that we'll probably have a second or third round of bids. Iwould say that within the next two or three weeks we will haveselected a winner. The offering has gotten a lot of interest andattention, particularly with the overtones of what's going on withRecksonin general."