Brandywine to sell old post office building for $354M

Brandywine Realty Trust has entered into a $354 million agreement to sell Cira Square, which is a former U.S. Postal Service building at 30th Street in the University City neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Once the transaction is completed, which is expected in the first quarter, the 862,700-square-foot building will be selling for $410 a square foot.

The property is fully leased to the General Services Administration and occupied by the Internal Revenue Service, which has a 20-year lease and roughly 5,000 employees working from the facility. Brandywine said a fund managed by KIM Investment Funds was the prospective buyer.

The Radnor, Pa., real estate investment trust bought the old post office building in 2007 for $28 million and launched a total redevelopment of the property. By 2010, it completed what was a $252 million renovation of the former 30th Street post office and a nearby garage.

Brandywine will use the funds to pay off a $212.9 million in debt and will reap $124.5 million in net proceeds that it will use to finance development, reduce debt and for general corporate purposes. Brandywine will continue to manage Cira Square and will also seek to prepay a $35.5 million mortgage on a nearby Cira Centre South garage, which has 1,662 spaces.

Brandywine also said in a statement that it has sold also properties in Carlsbad, Calif., a 1.6-acre development site located at 2nd and King streets in Wilmington, Del., for $6.5 million and a 158,000-square-foot flex property in King of Prussia, Pa., for $4.6 million. In all, these transactions totaled $395.5 million.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal