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January 23, 2007 Antares Investment Partners is poised to buy more property in Stamford's South End and in Greenwich after the high-profile real estate investment company sold its interest in Greenwich's Pickwick Plaza office and retail complex this month. The UST Inc. headquarters at 100 W. Putnam Ave. in Greenwich is one of many potential acquisitions, said Joseph Beninati and James Cabrera, Antares' managing partners and cofounders. "We are interested in buying anything in the South End to add to our commercial holdings, other than single-family houses," Cabrera said. "We also are interested in buying more assets in Greenwich, including residential, commercial, retail and hotel properties." The privately held company, which has operational headquarters in Stamford and investment headquarters in Greenwich, had a 22 percent interest in Pickwick Plaza. Its ownership partners were the Landis Group and Broadway Real Estate Partners LLC, both of New York City, and the Scottish Widows & Children's Pension Fund. In 2002, the partners bought the four-building Pickwick Plaza complex at the corner of East Putnam and Greenwich avenues for $115 million, or $483 per square foot. The group sold the 237,500-square-foot complex for $235 million, or about $987 a square foot, to Nabil Chartouni of Greenwich. Chartouni is with the New York City-based commercial real estate firm Kensico Properties. The Advocate and Greenwich Time reported in August that the $235 million sale to Chartouni was imminent. The sale eclipsed the previous record for a real estate deal in Connecticut, in which Antares also was involved. Antares bought the Putnam Green and Weaver's Hill apartment complexes, which contain a total of 462 units, for $223 million early last year. Antares renamed the complexes Greenwich Place and Greenwich Oaks and is converting them to upscale condominiums. Beninati said Antares is ready for new challenges after the Pickwick divestiture. "We feel that we accomplished our mission at Pickwick Plaza," he said. "We tripled the rent (to almost $100 per square foot). We completed a multimillion-dollar capital improvement project and we renovated the roof, lobbies and parking garage." Antares, however, is not the only company interested in buying the 150,000-square-foot UST headquarters, said John Goodkind, managing principal at the Greenwich office of New York City-based Newmark Knight Frank commercial real estate. "They are responsible and capable buyers," Goodkind said of Antares. "But at least 30 other capable buyers are looking at (100 W. Putnam Ave.)." UST, the world's largest maker of smokeless tobacco products, is selling its headquarters of the past several decades to trim costs. No one has disclosed an asking price. The company plans to relocate about 350 employees from Greenwich this summer to a 138,000-square-foot headquarters at the High Ridge Park office complex in Stamford. UST signed a lease for that space last year. The UST building could fetch about $100 million, or about $666.67 per square foot, said Tom Gladstone, owner of Gladstone Properties in Greenwich. Gladstone partly based his projections on the $87.5 million sale of the 119,344-square-foot headquarters of Unilever Home & Personal Care USA at 33 Benedict Place in Greenwich in 2005. Unilever is leasing the building as it prepares to relocate the headquarters to Englewood Cliffs, N.J., in the middle of next year. News reports that the owners of 33 Benedict Place expect to ask for rents as high as $100 per square foot per year after they renovate the building for multitenant use have enhanced the value of UST's building, Gladstone said. Gladstone said the UST building has great value because of its convenient access to main roads, an aesthetic design and window arrangement and high-quality building materials such as marble.
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