The historic Brown Derby building in Los Feliz traded hands for $9.25 million last week.
Los Feliz investment group CMC Asset Management LLC bought the retail and restaurant building at 4500 Los Feliz Blvd. from an investment group led by principals at Adler Realty Investments Inc. in Woodland Hills.
The 14,000-square-foot building housed the last of four Brown Derby restaurants that were popular Hollywood haunts. The others have been demolished or redeveloped. The restaurant at this location, once owned by director Cecil B. DeMille, was closed in 1960. It is has been through several iterations since then, including as a nightclub of the same name.
A JP Morgan Chase Bank branch and Louise’s Trattoria occupy most of the building, with about 2,000 square feet unoccupied.
The sellers, who include brokers Duncan Lemmon and John Battle of Lee & Associates Los Angeles West Inc., and Mike Adler and Rick Gable of Adler Realty, bought the project about eight years ago with plans to convert it into 80 apartments and a Whole Foods Market Inc. location.
But neighborhood residents protested and convinced the City Council to declare the building a historic monument, halting the plan. The group then abandoned the project and put the building on the market for $10.6 million last summer. CMC plans to operate the property as is.
“We are very relieved and excited at the same time. It’s the end of a long process,” said Lemmon. “The Brown Derby restaurant was significant for the culture of Los Angeles. This sale keeps the historic nature of the building intact. I think the neighborhood will be pleased to know.”
Lemmon and Battle represented themselves and the rest of the sellers; James Chu represented the buyer in-house.
Long Beach Turnover
A Long Beach office building that was left vacant when Boeing Co. moved out two years ago is finally leasing up again.
Verizon California Inc. and the FBI recently signed deals at the 4811 Airport Plaza building with owner Jamison Services Inc. That follows a deal with the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, which leased the top floor of the six-story building.
In total, the new leases pushed occupancy up to 72 percent at the 126,270-square-foot building, part of the 52-acre Long Beach Airport Business Park near the San Diego (405) Freeway and the Long Beach Airport.
Verizon signed a six-year lease for 46,000 square feet, taking all of the third and fourth floors. Financial terms were not disclosed but industry sources estimate the lease’s value at roughly $6.3 million. The new office will mostly be used to consolidate operations from other regional locations. The company moved in last week.
The FBI leased the entire fifth floor and a portion of the ground floor for a total of more than 21,000 square feet. The 15-year deal is valued at $9.6 million. The organization is relocating from a space of similar size at the Long Beach World Trade Center. It will move in early next year.
Boeing had occupied 122,000 square feet at the property for its C-17 Globemaster program until 2010, when the cargo plane program began winding down. It also vacated more than 100,000 square feet at an adjacent building and plans to leave another 150,000 square feet in the area this year.
While the news is grim for landlords, it’s opened up opportunities for other kinds of companies, according to Jeff Coburn, a principal at Lee & Associates Long Beach who represented the landlord.
“These Boeing buildings have never been on market and with these big blocks of space coming up, we are seeing big groups that would normally be (looking) more inland take advantage,” he said.
Verizon was represented by Jason Fine and Janice Cimbalo of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. Coburn and his Lee & Associates colleague Shaun McCullough represented Jamison and the FBI.
Delinquency Decline
The L.A. residential mortgage delinquency rate fell more than 1.5 percentage points last quarter compared with a year earlier, dropping for the 10th consecutive quarter.
The delinquency rate for single-family homes and condos was 5.9 percent for the quarter, according to data tracker TransUnion. That’s down from 6.5 percent in the first quarter and 7.6 percent in the second quarter of last year.
The delinquency rate, which tracks borrowers who are 60 or more days past due on mortgage payments, has been declining since its peak in the fourth quarter of 2009 when it was 10.6 percent. The national peak was 6.9 percent that same quarter.
Tim Martin, group vice president of TransUnion’s U.S. housing business unit, said that the L.A. delinquency rate is declining faster than other areas of the country, but partly because the local housing market had among the highest delinquency peaks.
“You got to a high peak and had a lot of room to come down,” he said.
Still, the rate has much room for improvement. It was only 1.5 percent at the height of the market in the second quarter of 2007. Meanwhile, California recorded the largest decline among states, with a 1.7 point drop to 6.1 percent, only slightly higher than the national rate of 5.5 percent.
Staff reporter Jacquelyn Ryan can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.
