Locke Lord partner Steve Jacobs snagged a big real estate deal this week, serving as local counsel for Brookfield Property Partners on its purchase of the Houston Center office-and-retail complex downtown from J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
Terms haven’t been disclosed but a source close to the situation said the sale amounted to $855 million. Earlier reports had the sale price at $875 million.
Brookfield’s lead outside counsel was Patrick Dowd, partner at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in New York. Stroock & Stroock & Lavan provided outside legal counsel to J.P. Morgan through partner Steven Moskowitz and associates Danielle Grunwald and Stephen Brown, all of New York. Jackson Walker partners Priya Coffey and Michael Kuhn and associate Earl Latchley in Houston represented J.P. Morgan as local counsel. Jackson Walker has advised the Houston Center since the late 1990s, when it was owned by Crescent Real Estate. “We’ve known the complex so long, we were just a good source of information on it,” Coffey said.
Holliday Fenoglio Fowler handled the sale for the investment bank and the acquisition financing for the buyer with a team that included Jeff Hollinden and Scott Galloway in Houston, as well Mark Gibson in Dallas and Trent Agnew in Houston.
Hollinden didn’t respond to requests for additional information about the deal, but in a statement he described investor interest in the property as “very robust.”
“Both domestic and offshore investors were attracted by the deal size, strength of the location, diversified tenancy and the overall resiliency of the Houston economy and office market,” he said.
The transaction has been in the works for months, with the Houston Chronicle first reporting a potential sale in September. The newspaper noted it was the latest in a string of mega-deals in Houston’s office market as it continued to struggle to recover from the oil-price slump.
Toronto-based Brookfield also owns the seven-acre Allen Center office complex on the west side of downtown, which is in the midst of a $48.5 million renovation, and downtown’s DoubleTree hotel, Total Plaza and Heritage Plaza, the Chronicle noted at the time.
The Houston Center is considered the largest property in Houston’s central business district with 4.2 million square feet of office and retail space covering 9.2 acres. It’s made up of three high-rise office towers and a 16-story office building atop 196,000 square feet of retail.
Currently 71.6 percent leased, the property’s largest tenants include LyondellBasell Chemical, Norton Rose Fulbright and Haynes and Boone. Other tenants include Pappas Brothers Steakhouse, Massa’s South Coast Grill, Fit Athletic Club and Kelsey-Seybold Clinic.
Locke Lord’s Jacobs didn’t respond to requests for additional information on the deal. But his biography on the firm’s website says he advises clients on real estate company formation, development, ownership and acquisition. The University of Texas-trained lawyer also has transactional experience involving income producing properties and has represented sports franchises in facility leasing and development and related naming and concession rights.
Back in 2008, Jacobs represented Sterling Bank on a 20-year lease for 211,343 square feet at the Brookhollow Central office campus in Houston owned by TPG/CalSTRS, a joint venture between Thomas Properties Group and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System.