Argent to purchase Brooklyn building.

In keeping with its strategy of buying office buildings and warehouses and then converting them for use by telecommunications firms, Argent Ventures is under contract to purchase a 275,000-square-foot downtown Brooklyn office building that it hopes to rent to a single tenant.

Argent, the Fifth Avenue real estate investment and management firm, plans to close within several months on 180 Livingston Street and is in the process of seeking a tenant to replace a state agency that has occupied the entire building since 1986 and plans to leave by the end of the year.

The six-story building figures to be attractive to large prospective tenants because it will be completely vacant once the state Workers' Compensation Board leaves. With few such buildings available in New Jersey -- no less Manhattan and the nearby outer boroughs -- 180 Livingston Street offers an opportunity, with rents in the mid-$20s per square foot, for a company that wants an entire building.

The building, purchased from Federal Department Stores, could also house the back offices of a financial services firm or be converted into housing. The building features 41,000-square-foot floorplates and 200-pound- per-square-foot floorloads, making it ideal for heavyweight telecommunication equipment without further reinforcement.

Argent's purchase of 180 Livingston St. is its first in Brooklyn. As part of its strategy of creating a national platform of telecommunications properties, it owns telecom-friendly properties in Weehawken and Jersey City, both in New Jersey, Seattle, Boston, Cleveland, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park, the Washington, D.C., suburb of Chantilly, VA, and overseas in Amsterdam and the Paris suburb of Colombes.

Argent also owns office and retail properties at 685 Third Avenue, 1

Park Avenue, and the Manhattan Mall on 33rd Street and Sixth Avenue and a shopping center in Montreal.