A two-story office and medical building in Santa Monica has sold to the private, co-educational Wildwood School for a reported $50.6 million.
Earlier this month, Jade Enterprises handed off the 100,700-square-foot Ocean Park Plaza, which sat 73% vacant at the time of the sale. Following renovations, Wildwood’s middle and upper school will move to the site from its leased Sawtelle campus. Matt Levinson, Wildwood’s head of school, said he sees “potential to grow” in the space. Standout features that drew the school to the property include a large courtyard, flexible collaborative spaces, ample underground parking fit for student pick-up and drop-off, and proximity to the 17-acre Clover Park.
“The board, when they saw this property, they really saw the future of the school,” Levinson said. “It really meets a lot of our needs long-term and strategically.”
The lease on the Olympic Boulevard building currently housing roughly 700 Wildwood students in sixth through 12th grade will come up in 2040. But school leaders hope to move to the new, permanent campus “much sooner than then,” Levinson said.
Ocean Park corridor ‘reshaping’
Ocean Park Plaza sits in a corridor near the Santa Monica Airport undergoing significant transformation away from its historically office-heavy footprint, said Colliers Vice Chair Sean Fulp, who represented the seller in the deal.
“The area is reshaping itself to be more live work play, so a school fits really well,” he said.
New multifamily housing and ground-floor retail developments have sprouted in the corridor, along with Seven Arrows Elementary School, which relocated to a Santa Monica office building after one of its original schoolhouses burned down in the Palisades Fire.
For an office market slumped by the rise of hybrid and remote work, user-owners have been a “relief valve,” Fulp said.
Over a fifth of West L.A. office space sat vacant in this year’s first quarter, Cushman & Wakefield reported – still well above pre-pandemic averages. The area posted a 10% office vacancy rate in late 2019.
“Users have been taking advantage of depressed pricing and other factors,” Fulp said.
