Brookfield Cuts D.C. Staff, Looks To Sell Part Of The Yards

One of the world’s largest commercial real estate investors has dramatically reduced its presence in the nation’s capital. 

Brookfield has been offloading D.C.-area office buildings for months, and a source who left the company now tells Bisnow it has also been laying people off and is preparing to largely end its operations in the city. 

Bisnow/Ethan Rothstein

A Brookfield-owned office building at 650 Massachusetts Ave. NW in D.C.

The company had more than 100 people in its 655 New York Ave. NW office three years ago. It gradually reduced the headcount to about 40 a few months ago, at which point, the company informed the majority of them that they would be let go, according to the source, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal communications from their former employer.

Now, the company has fewer than 10 people in its D.C. office who report to other teams, like its hospitality and risk management divisions, the source said. 

Brookfield spokesperson Andrew Brent disputed that claim, saying the company has reduced its D.C. headcount but still has 30 full-time employees in the city.

He did not directly address claims that Brookfield is winding down its operations in the city and declined to comment on if additional layoffs are imminent.

“Our operating team has always scaled with acquisitions and dispositions within our portfolio,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “While our DC office team has become smaller as we’ve completed business plans for several investments in recent years, the biggest change was the result of our strategic partnership with CBRE.”

In January 2024, Brookfield said it was outsourcing all of its U.S. office property management to CBRE. 

The former Brookfield source didn’t know if the company would be fully leaving the Massachusetts Avenue office or keeping a small space for the “straggler” employees. 

The spokesperson declined to comment on the future of the company’s office space or the assets it owns in the region.

But Brookfield is looking to sell a prominent development site along the city’s waterfront.

On Thursday, brokerage firm Berkadia sent out a listing for Parcel Q at The Yards, a 48-acre mixed-use district that is the crown jewel of its D.C. portfolio. The parcel is a 90K SF piece of land at 425 Tingey St. that Berkadia is touting as “the last waterfront development opportunity” within the 48-acre district.

The site had initially been planned as office, but the developer last month filed plans to switch that to residential, and the Berkadia listing says the National Capital Planning Commission approved that. It says a development on the property could reach up to 90 feet tall and total 189K SF, including 14K SF of retail.

At least two former Brookfield D.C. employees have posted about their departures over the past week on LinkedIn. 

Eamon Lorincz posted Thursday that his five-year stint at Brookfield, most recently as senior vice president, “is coming to an end as the company winds down its D.C. office.”

Bobby Swennes, who previously led the company’s mid-Atlantic region before being promoted to president of Brookfield Properties last year, posted last week that he “recently stepped away to think about what I want the next phase of my career to look like.”

While the executive was based in the D.C. office, the former Brookfield employee Bisnow spoke to said they don’t know whether Swennes’ departure was related to the local reductions.

Last month, Brookfield sold a prominent downtown Bethesda office asset for $20M, a fraction of the $150M it paid in 2011.

In October, Brookfield lost six Montgomery County office properties at a foreclosure sale. Those were just the latest in a wave of distressed situations Brookfield has faced in its office portfolio around the country. 

Brookfield still lists over a dozen D.C. office assets on its website, including 655 New York Ave. NW, 650 Massachusetts Ave. NW, 2000 M St. NW and 799 Ninth St. NW. 

The company hasn’t said whether it plans to sell those buildings specifically, but in September, Brookfield executives told investors they were kicking off a process to sell about $10B in office assets globally by 2030. 

Many D.C. office assets’ property values have suffered huge losses due to the post-pandemic remote work shift, the flight of tenants to newer buildings and the Trump administration’s job cuts in the region. Other investors have pulled back from the D.C. region due to the many headwinds it faces. 

Beyond Brookfield’s office portfolio and The Yards, it also owns the 36-acre Halley Rise mixed-use development in Reston.

UPDATE, JUNE 5, 5:51 P.M. ET: The story was updated to include that Brookfield listed Parcel Q at The Yards for sale.