The City Center office tower and retail center in downtown Minneapolis sold for $315 million, a record for a Minnesota skyscraper.
City Center in downtown Minneapolis sells for record price
The Minneapolis skyscraper nearly sold for $280M last year before Target's sizable layoffs.
November 11, 2016 at 2:18AM
The 51-story City Center tower, also called 33 South Sixth, sits along Nicollet Mall and is the fourth tallest building in the city.
Real estate services firm CBRE helped arrange the sale on behalf of Shorenstein Properties LLC, which purchased City Center for $205.5 million in 2012. The Class A office tower was sold to HNA Holding Group Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Chinese conglomerate HNA Group.
The sale would be HNA Group's first office acquisition in the Twin Cities market. This spring, a unit of HNA purchased Minnetonka-based Carlson Hotels, known for hospitality brands including Radisson and Country Inns and Suites.
"This sale further demonstrates the health of the Twin Cities market and its attractiveness to foreign capital such as HNA," Tom Holtz, executive vice president of CBRE Capital Markets, said in a statement.
The sale closed Wednesday, but no electronic certificate of real estate value was available as of Thursday morning.
A person familiar with the transaction put the price at $315 million, eclipsing the $253 million value that the IDS Center sold for in 2013. That building, the tallest in Minnesota, went on sale again in March. In September, Ameriprise Financial Center in downtown Minneapolis was sold for $200 million, the biggest real estate transaction in the state this year.
Shorenstein nearly sold City Center last year for $280 million, but the potential buyer — Los Angeles-based CIM Group — was spooked after the building's major tenant Target Corp. announced significant layoffs.
Since then, Target signed a 15-year lease on 984,000 square feet, or 73 percent, of the building's entire office space.
In the ground-and-skyway-level retail portion of the building, Shorenstein attracted Saks Off Fifth earlier this year but also saw the departure of Sports Authority, Rosa Mexicano and the Italian restaurant Il Foro.
Late last year, Shorenstein sold a portion of the complex that is occupied by the Minneapolis Marriott Hotel.
Nicole Norfleet • 612-673-4495
Twitter: @nicolenorfleet
The two companies announced the agreement Friday evening. The terms are effective immediately.
