Brookfield Eyes Stake In $3.5B Manhattan Office Campus
Brookfield is in talks to take a 10% stake in Hudson Square Properties, a 13-building office complex on the West Side of Manhattan.
The deal would value the 6.2M SF campus, which is positioning itself as a nucleus for tech and media tenants in the city, at $3.5B, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources.
A joint venture between Trinity Church, Norges Bank Investment Management and Hines owns the portfolio.
Houston-based Hines became the portfolio’s operating partner in 2016. But under the recapitalization deal, which is expected to close in the coming months, Brookfield would step in as the properties’ long-term operating partner and Hines would exit its stake, a person with knowledge of the deal told Bisnow.
Brookfield's stake is expected to be much larger than Hines' and infuse the office complex with fresh new capital, the person said.
Brookfield has been one of the largest U.S. office investors but has suffered losses on its portfolio following the pandemic. Over the past three years, the asset manager offloaded assets once valued at more than $3B for significant discounts, Bisnow previously reported.
Its bet on Hudson Square Properties would come as the asset management giant plans to refinance more than $8B of office debt and sell approximately $10B of assets by 2030, including some of its New York City holdings.
Hudson Square and neighboring West Village continue to have elevated office vacancy at 23%, above Manhattan’s overall 19%, according to a second-quarter report by Cushman & Wakefield. However, the area has also drawn several significant tenants, which are expected to bring that percentage down.
That includes Anthropic, which just last week announced that it finalized a deal to lease the entirety of the 16-story building at 330 Hudson St. The office isn’t part of the Hudson Square Properties portfolio.
Other tenants in the neighborhood include Google, which renewed its 411K SF lease at 315 Hudson St., and Paypal, which inked a 261K SF lease at the joint venture's 345 Hudson St. in late 2025.
The campus has a long history, dating back to 1705. Queen Anne of Great Britain gave Trinity Church the 215-acre parcel to support its mission. In the 1900s, the area evolved from residential use to industrial, eventually becoming the Printing District.
Artists and media companies later moved into the lofts previously used by printing presses. In 2015, Norges, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, partnered with Trinity Church to overhaul the portfolio into modern office space.
UPDATE, JULY 13, 3:20 P.M. ET: This story has been updated to include more detail about Brookfield's investment.
