United Plaza, 1650 Arch St. for sale as portfolio for $200M

by Natalie Kostelni Staff writer for Philadelphia Business Journal

Two more Center City office buildings are coming on the market, adding to a growing list of downtown office buildings that are up for sale as investor interest in the Central Business District strengthens.

United Plaza and 1650 Arch St. are being packaged as a portfolio and anticipated to sell for as much as $200 million, according to an estimate. Though the buildings are being marketed together, they could be sold individually to the right buyers.
The strategy to sell them together came about since they have the same owner (TIER REIT) and the properties have a very similar profile that will attract similar buyers. “We believe there are synergies in owning both assets, basically economies of scale.”

Both buildings are well leased with significant credit and lease terms, he said. Debt markets are as healthy as they’ve been in recent memory, which will help generate aggressive pricing for the portfolio or on an individual basis.

TIER REIT, which is formerly Behringer Harvard REIT I Inc. of Dallas, Texas, is the seller.
United Plaza stands 20 stories and totals 617,476 square feet. It is 93.7 percent leased. Duane Morris, a law firm, occupies 257,000 square feet of the building for its headquarters. Its lease doesn’t expire until August 2019.

When the building was first acquired in 2002 by another company, Oaktree Capital Management, it spent $31 million conducting a total renovation of the building at 30 S. 17 th St. At the time, the property was dated, having been constructed in 1975, and had lost an engineering firm that took up nearly half of the building. It was also renamed United Plaza from United Engineers.
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