New York-based Grunberg Realty has purchased the 29-story office building at 280 Trumbull St. in downtown Hartford for $65 million.

A string of multimillion-dollar office building sales in the Hartford area continued last week when New York-based Grunberg Realty bought a 29-story building in downtown Hartford for $65 million, making it the second-largest office building sale in downtown Hartford in 15 years, according to CB Richard Ellis, which represented the seller.

The New Boston Fund sold the 672,000-square-foot Class A office building at 280 Trumbull St. for $97 per square foot.

“It’s a very large sale for Hartford,” said Jay Wamester, a member of the Office Leasing Team at Colliers Dow & Condon, who represented Grunberg Realty.

The investment market has been hot recently, with CB Richard Ellis making several other sales in the Hartford suburbs and with New Boston Fund bringing several of its properties to market.

John McCormick and Pat Mulready of CB Richard Ellis, in addition to representing New Boston Fund in the sale of 280 Trumbull St., brokered the June sale of a multi-tenant office building in Farmington – another New Boston Fund property – for $4.4 million. That same month, they also negotiated the sale of a fully occupied data center in Windsor.

The sales are the result of increasing interest in central Connecticut.

“I think there’s a lot of interest in Hartford,” Wamester said.

‘Trophy Properties’

Currently there is a lot of construction in downtown Hartford, from the new convention center to shopping districts to apartment complexes, but no new offices, according to Wamester.

“Over the last 15 years we’ve had no new office construction,” he noted.

Part of the reason is because it takes a long time to build office facilities, he said. As a result, demand for office space has increased over time.

“There’s a lot of interest in trophy properties in downtown Hartford,” Wamester said.

Wamester has represented Grunberg Realty before, when the firm purchased a medical center two years ago. Most of the company’s holdings are in Manhattan, but Grunberg officials were seeking to expand their portfolio and looked to Connecticut to do that, he said. The purchase of 280 Trumbull St. is another attempt to expand the company’s portfolio with a better deal than it could have found in Manhattan, Wamester said.

Grunberg was one of five bidders on the building, McCormick noted. The building went on the market last November, but McCormick and Mulready did not start marketing it aggressively until after the holidays, McCormick said.

The building is about 93 percent occupied – higher occupancy than most buildings in downtown Hartford – and houses tenants like Prudential Financial, Robinson & Cole, CIGNA Corp., UPS Capital and the U.S. National Labor Relations Board, according to CB Richard Ellis.

“Grunberg acquired a high-quality asset, tenanted largely by institutional-grade tenants in a market that is poised for economic growth and prosperity,” said Jeff Dunne, who also worked on the deal for CB Richard Ellis.

The building is across the street from the Hartford Hilton Hotel and the future site of Hartford 21, a residential and commercial development. It was voted Building of the Year in 1999 and 2000 by the Building Owners & Managers Association, according to CB Richard Ellis.

“I am very bullish on Hartford, as well as 280 Trumbull St.,” said Michael Grunberg of Grunberg Realty in a prepared statement. “One just has to stand in the lobby for a few minutes to appreciate the quality and caliber of the individuals working in the building that make the building Class A-plus, from tenants such as Prudential Financial, Robinson & Cole, CIGNA, etc., all the way down to the local Hartford cleaning company we’ve hired. The people working at 280 Trumbull are one of the best assets of the building and, because of that, the Grunbergs will own and manage this incredible building for many years to come.”

The price of $97 per square foot was a good one, McCormick said.

“The price per square foot was really attractive,” he noted.

The building would cost $250 per square foot to reproduce, he said. The sale also represented a good profit for New Boston Fund, who bought it in March 2001 for $45.5 million. The company, however, had to spend money on ground-floor leasing after purchasing the building, McCormick said. CB Richard Ellis also brokered that sale.

“We accomplished all of our value enhancement goals several years ahead of schedule and decided to take advantage of good market pricing in today’s low interest rate and highly competitive environment,” said Bill Fenn, asset manager with New Boston Fund.

Hartford has been popular with private equity markets from Boston to as far south as Atlanta, partly because of Connecticut’s high per capita income, McCormick said. Many investors also see now as a good time to get into the market.

“The private equity markets from outside Hartford … have been very interested in the Hartford story,” he said.