One of The Ardent Cos.’ Piedmont Center buildings that is home to Kaiser Permanente.
Ardent Cos.’ sprawling Buckhead office campus is at risk of being seized by the world’s largest asset manager.
BlackRock is considering taking over the 2.2M SF office park, which is potentially close to underwater on its $421.8M debt load, Green Street’s Real Estate Alert publication reported.
BlackRock owns a junior piece of the capital stack backed by all 14 buildings in Piedmont Center, Real Estate Alert reported, citing numerous sources with knowledge of the situation.
Ardent Managing Director Scott Werbel and a BlackRock spokesperson declined to comment to Bisnow.
Ardent, which is headquartered at Piedmont Center and has been in the process of renovating and modernizing the office complex, is still the landlord, while the status of the loans on the building is unclear.
Ardent amassed the 14 buildings over the course of five years, capping the process with the purchase of Buildings 5 through 8 in 2021 from Granite Cos. The move gave Ardent full control of the 45-acre wooded campus where the buildings are situated.
The investment firm was planning to convert 32K SF of ground-level office space in Buildings 1 through 4 into a retail and food hub, including a market deli and a brewery, What Now Atlanta reported. Werbel told Bisnow in 2021 that Ardent was also exploring developing some of the campus for residential use.
Morgan Stanley originated a floating-rate, senior loan in 2021 for $330.8M to purchase the final four buildings, according to real estate database Reonomy. The two-year loan had three one-year extensions, per Real Estate Alert. It is unclear how BlackRock…
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