Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. has acquired the Santa Monica offices of Google Inc., as the local real estate investment trust seeks to expand on the Westside.
Last month, Hudson bought the nearly 46,000-square-foot three-story building at 604 Arizona Ave. from Noncom Properties, a group of undisclosed local investors who acquired it in 2004.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but industry sources pegged the deal at roughly $22 million. The building sold for $12 million in 2004, and was assessed at $12.9 million in 2009. Hudson declined comment through a spokesman.
This will be the 14th addition to Hudson’s portfolio, which comprises 4 million square feet of creative- and tech-focused buildings from San Francisco to San Diego, including Hollywood’s Sunset Gower Studios and Sunset Bronson Studios. However, until now, the REIT only had two Westside properties: a three-story office building with two sound stages in Culver City and a six-story office building in Beverly Hills.
“The buyer is getting involved with Westside creative properties because they already run proper studios further east,” said broker David Wilson of Lee & Associates West Los Angeles who represented Hudson. “We think the building is the best overall creative building in Santa Monica. The rub to the deal is that Google’s lease expires in a year.”
Google has occupied the entire building since 2005, but the Silicon Valley search firm has signed a lease to move in April into the Binoculars Building designed by Frank Gehry on Venice’s Main Street.
Leasing the space shouldn’t be a problem, though, as Santa Monica was the only city in Los Angeles County to post a vacancy rate below 10 percent last quarter. In fact, Hudson has already received four proposals from companies seeking to lease the space when Google moves out, Wilson said.
Noncom Properties was represented by Lee & Associates West Los Angeles broker Andrew Wilson, the brother of Hudson’s representative.
Top-Dollar Condo
In the priciest L.A. condo sale of the year, a unit in the Montage Beverly Hills sold for $13.8 million, or $2,400 per square foot, last month to an undisclosed buyer.
It was the 11th of the five-star hotel’s 20 condos to sell and the third to sell above the $10 million mark. The condos have been on the market for more than two years.
The unit is a 5,700-square-foot penthouse with four bedrooms and six-and-a-half baths, as well as a walk-in wine closet and terraces with panoramic views.
Residences at the Montage range from 1,900 square feet to 5,700 square feet and have two to five bedrooms. They are priced from $4.6 million to $16.8 million, and are on the top three floors of the eight-floor, 201-room hotel, operated by Montage Hotels & Resorts LLC of Laguna Beach.
All residences receive concierge services as well as access to the hotel’s spa, fitness center, restaurant and bar. Among the residents of the condos are embattled Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and local developer Larry Field.
But Stephen Shapiro, chairman of luxury residential brokerage Westside Estate Agency, said that most of the buyers so far have been out-of-towners.
“The nature of the buyer at the Montage is that they don’t slive in L.A., (but want a presence here) and want all the amenities,” he said.
Despite the high price of the sale, Shapiro said little should be read into it about overall market conditions.
“I don’t think it means anything other than a very wealthy person found what they wanted and they bought it,” he said.
Joy Denton of Sotheby’s International Realty in Beverly Hills represents the Montage.
Dr. Lee in Long Beach
In the largest office deal in Long Beach this year, a six-story office building known as Downtown Plaza traded hands for $12.8 million.
Jamison Realty Advisors, one of the largest property owners in the county, bought the 100,146-square-foot building last month from Behringer Harvard, an Addison, Texas, commercial real estate investment company.
It’s the second deal closed this year by the L.A. company owned by Dr. David Y. Lee, a Korean immigrant who has been acquiring properties since 1995 but had curbed purchases since the downturn.
“The market has clearly benefited from an increase in trade and port traffic in Long Beach and Los Angeles,” said Kevin Shannon, vice chairman of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. in its Torrance office, who represented the buyer and the seller with colleague Louay Alsadek.
Built in 1982, the six-floor building at 211 E. Ocean Ave. is 81 percent leased to six tenants, including anchor tenant Designory, a creative ad agency.
Jamison manages and leases more than 100 commercial building throughout Southern California and a handful in Texas for a total portfolio of 22 million square feet. The highest concentration of properties is in L.A.’s Koreatown.
Jamison representatives did not return calls requesting comment.
Staff reporter Jacquelyn Ryan can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.
