The Grand Avenue Executive Center in El Segundo has changed hands for about $39.5 million, with Karl Storz Endoscopy-America Inc. picking up the Class A office property in a deal that closed at the end of December.
The seller of the 121,100-square-foot, four-story building at 2151 E. Grand Ave. was Transwestern Investment Co. LLC, a Chicago-based investment and asset management firm that is loosely affiliated with commercial real estate services company Transwestern. The property is adjacent to the Toyota Sports Center, which is the practice facility for the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Kings. The 2001 building was designed by architecture firm Nadel and Associates.
Karl Storz, a medical equipment manufacturer, currently has offices at the Corporate Pointe development in Culver City and will likely move into its new building by first quarter 2009.
Karl Storz will occupy at least 90,000 square feet of the building, which is currently home to tenants including the Lakers and M.A.C. Cosmetics Inc.
The deal breaks down to about $326 per square foot. Transwestern had owned the building for about a year.
“With this price, the sellers reached their goals and it was a win-win deal,” said Steven Solomon of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., who represented the seller. “The buyer was able to buy basically a new building that was existing, and this is a very efficient state-of-the-art building in a pretty hot market now in its close proximity to the Kings’ and Lakers’ training facility.”
The Lakers organization, which moved its corporate offices to the building in 2004, will stay there. It has a 10-year lease and occupies 12,000 square feet.
Mike Catalano of Studley Inc. represented the buyer.
Vernon Sale
Master Development Corp. has paid $10.4 million to get into the tight industrial market in Vernon.
The Newport Beach-based industrial developer bought the 113,500-square-foot industrial building at 4380 Ayers Ave. from 4380 Ayers Ltd., the entity of an unnamed a private real estate investor, in a deal that closed Jan. 22.
Bryan Bentrott, executive vice president of Master Development, said that his company had long wanted to get into the Vernon industrial market, which he said has a 2 percent vacancy rate.
“It finally gets us into a market that we’ve aspired to get into for a few years,” said Bentrott. “You drive around Vernon and you get a good feel. It is an odd place in that there is every different use under the sun including the Farmer John slaughterhouse.”
Master Development purchased the building in a joint venture partnership with GE Asset Management, the manager of General Electric Co.’s main U.S. pension plan. This is the sixth deal Master Development has done with GE Asset Management.
The building was vacated at the end of December by a distribution company that
was subleasing space from tenant Elkay Plastics Co. Inc., which has moved its
operation to Commerce.
The deal breaks down to $92 per square foot for the building. “We didn’t steal the building. I think it’s a fair price,” Bentrott said.
He added that his company will upgrade the building to the tune of $400,000. The renovations include new paint and a remodel of the building’s office space. The renovations are under way and should be complete in two months. In the end, Master Development hopes to sell the property to an industrial user but will lease it out until it can find a buyer.
“We think after we get done with this thing, someone is going to want to buy it,” Bentrott said.
Jeffrey Sanita, John McMillan and Tim Wallace of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. represented Master Development; the seller was represented by Frank Marino of Sun Coast Real Estate of Santa Barbara.
UCLA Deal
University of California Los Angeles Extension will open a downtown location after signing a lease for space at Figueroa Courtyard.
Currently, UCLA Extension is housed downtown at the Japanese American Community and Cultural Center, where it has held classes for about four years on a “lengthy temporary basis,” said David Menninger, associate dean for continuing education and UCLA Extension. UCLA Extension will leave the old space by June and move into its new digs at 261 S. Figueroa St. in time for the summer quarter of classes.
The 10-year lease for 16,380 square feet with landlord California National Bank subsidiary of Oak Park, Ill.-based bank holding company FBOP Corp. is valued at $5 million. The deal closed at the beginning of January.
Prior to its lease at the cultural center, UCLA Extension had been housed at downtown’s World Trade Center building, which it was forced to leave because of seismic concerns.
Menninger said that the “campus feel” of Figueroa Courtyard, which includes five buildings on a 4.5-acre property, was appealing to the university.
“They are low-rise for the most part,” he said. “You go onto the complex and it has a nice feel to it for what we want to use it for.”
Currently the space is being renovated and will include 13 classrooms. The work should be done by the end of March, Menninger said.
“We are going for kind of a corporate feel for the classrooms themselves because we do try to serve the business community downtown,” he said.
In 1917, the University of California opened its first Extension campus at Second and Hill streets downtown.
Craig Jablin and David Gordon of Studley Inc. represented UCLA in the deal. The landlord was represented by Chris Runyen of Charles Dunn Co.
Staff reporter Daniel Miller can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 263.
