ST. LOUIS — The AT&T tower, downtown's largest office building, has a new owner.
A document filed last week with the city of St. Louis shows that the 1.4 million-square-foot tower at 909 Chestnut St., which has been vacant since sole tenant AT&T moved its employees in 2017, changed hands April 25. The special servicer that represents the bondholders that owned the building for years appears to have sold the property to a limited-liability company affiliated with New York-based developer SomeraRoad Inc.
The sale price or exact type of transaction was unavailable Tuesday because the information hadn’t yet been entered into the city’s system. An appraisal conducted in August by the special servicer valued the building at $9.2 million, a 95% decline from when the building last sold for $204.9 million in 2006.
According to the document filed with the city, ownership of the tower switched from Washington, D.C.-based special servicer CWCapital to MTP-909 Chestnut PropCo LLC, an entity formed March 31 in Missouri and registered March 30 in Delaware. The filing creating the LLC in Missouri was signed by Fergus Campbell, a principal of SomeraRoad.
Details of the transaction are unclear, and a city employee said sometimes deed filings can represent internal transfers, such as when a company moves a property from one entity to another one that they own. But other documents, filed in reports to the building's bondholders over the last several months, indicate that an unidentified buyer was under contract and a sale was imminent, with an expected closing date of spring or the second quarter. The latest document, filed in mid-April, offered further clarification, saying the deal would close by the end of April.
Campbell, of SomeraRoad, did not respond to requests for comment.
Built in 1986 as the headquarters for Southwestern Bell, the 46-story building takes up a full city block and is the largest office building in the city and the state of Missouri.
Read the full story on the St. Louis Business Journal's website.
