Education Firm Stays Home in $22 Million Deal

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Pacific Oaks Education Corp. has acquired the Pasadena office complex where it leases space for $21.5 million – or $287 a square foot – aiming to keep the site as its permanent home with room to expand.

The nonprofit, which operates as Pacific Oaks College and Pacific Oaks Children’s School, purchased the four-building campus at 55 W. Eureka St. from NW Innovation Center on May 18, said its representatives at Newmark Knight Frank. (The brokerage recently dropped “Grubb” from its name.)

Pasadena city records from April show that Pacific Oaks needed city officials to approve the acquisition, which they did, because it planned to receive a tax-exempt loan for as much as $22 million from the Illinois Finance Authority. Pacific Oaks belongs to a Chicago-based nonprofit network of colleges, TCS Education System, which qualified for the loan. City records also documented the purchase price, and that Pacific Oaks planned to spend $2 million on renovations, including upgrades to the library, classrooms, and common spaces.

Newmark’s Josef Farrar, who represented Pacific Oaks with David Kluth and Aliya Coher, said the nonprofit had been looking to buy space in Pasadena for four years but was limited by zoning restrictions for higher-education facilities. NW Innovation Center, represented by CBRE’s Mark Shaffer and Kevin Duffy, wasn’t initially interested in selling the 75,000-square-foot campus, which was built in 1964 and renovated in 2006.

Pacific Oaks occupies 45,000 square feet at the campus, and the state of California is the next largest tenant.

On Vine

The owner of a Venice building leased to actor Andrew Keegan’s Full Circle Church is dropping the asking price after the property has sat on the market for a little over a year.

Owner BLT Enterprises in Santa Monica is now aiming to sell the Rose Avenue building for $5.2 million, or just over $830 a square foot, according to listing broker Alicia Shepherd of Marcus & Millichap. A previous listing with a different brokerage put the asking price at $6.5 million.

The 112-year-old, 6,259-square-foot property painted with colorful murals has been a tough sell because zoning restrictions require it to remain a worship space or be used as a private home, she said.

“(BLT is) not looking for someone to tear it down,” Shepherd said. “(It’s) looking for someone to give it some love.”

Keegan, who starred in the 1999 film “10 Things I Hate About You,” was a contender to buy the property but negotiations didn’t pan out, she said.

Commercial properties on Rose have recently fetched much higher prices on a per-square-foot basis: The former Superba restaurant sold in April 2016 for $3.9 million, or $2,583 a square foot, and a store at 419 Rose sold in May 2016 for $2.95 million, or $1,439 a square foot.

Student Payday

Kayne Anderson Real Estate Advisors sold eight student housing properties and four multifamily buildings to Singapore real estate developer Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd., the firm announced this month.

The Century City-based private equity investor sold other properties to Mapletree in November and May, and taken together, the three deals are valued at $1.6 billion, according to a Kayne spokeswoman.

Mapletree now owns 43 student housing buildings worldwide with 18,024 beds. The latest acquisitions add 3,751 beds near universities in the United States and Canada.

Staff reporter Daina Beth Solomon can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 556-8337.

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