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AT&T tower, downtown's massive vacant skyscraper, sells for fraction of previous $200M sale price

It was built in 1985 as the headquarters for Southwestern Bell.
Credit: DILIP VISHWANAT, SLBJ
The AT&T tower, vacant for years, has sold for a fraction of the $204.5 million sale price recorded the last time the skyscraper was traded in 2006.

ST. LOUIS — The largest office building in Missouri, vacant for years, sold for a fraction of the $204.5 million sale price recorded the last time the downtown St. Louis skyscraper traded.

The AT&T tower, a 46-story skyscraper that takes up an entire city block at 909 Chestnut St., sold for $4.05 million last month, according to records filed with the city. That equates to about $2.89 paid per square foot for the 1.4 million-square-foot building, or less than 2% of the building's $204.5 million price tag the last time it sold in 2006.

Trustees of US Bank, representing the bondholders that own the building after a foreclosure that followed sole tenant AT&T’s departure from the building in 2017, sold the tower April 25 to a limited-liability company affiliated with New York-based developer SomeraRoad, according to city filings.

Ian Ross, a principal at SomeraRoad, declined Friday to comment about the sale or the company’s plans for the building.

SomeraRoad has been active in the Midwest in recent years, opening offices in Nashville and Cleveland, among others. Last week, the Kansas City Business Journal reported that SomeraRoad recently moved into a new Kansas City office to focus on a decade-long project to redevelop 26 acres there.

Built in 1985 as the headquarters for Southwestern Bell, the building then known as One AT&T Center set a record sale price when AT&T sold it to Chicago-based Inland Real Estate in 2006, with AT&T leasing back the entire building.

The building’s lender, U.S. Bank, foreclosed after AT&T vacated the tower in 2017, leaving bondholders with the building. The latest bond filings indicate that $107 million of the $112 million in debt used to finance the 2006 deal is still on the books.

Read the full story on the St. Louis Business Journal website.

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