Investors love the 90210 ZIP code. And just in case that wasn’t clear, it was highlighted last month when a Beverly Hills office building sold for $1,100 a square foot, the highest per-square-foot price for an office asset the area has seen.
Cain Hoy Enterprises, a Greenwich, Conn., private investment firm, shelled out $130 million for the 118,400-square-foot Class A office building at 100 N. Crescent Drive. The seller, New York’s Clarion Partners, purchased the building in 2012 for $80 million, a 63 percent return in three years.
Beverly Hills is a tight market and office buildings don’t trade often, especially those as large as this one. That limited availability, coupled with rents averaging almost $5 a square foot a month, the highest in Los Angeles County, has helped drive prices up.
The only two recent trades that came close to the per-square-foot price Cain Hoy paid came last year. In those deals, New York’s Rockefeller Group purchased a portfolio at 9336-48 Civic Center Drive for $896 a square foot from New York firm Tishman Speyer and Kansas City, Mo., asset manager Deutsch Asset & Wealth Management acquired 331 N. Maple Drive from San Francisco real estate investment firm Spear Street Capital for $781 a square foot.
Cain Hoy representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
The building, which is 97 percent leased, serves as the headquarters of anchor tenant 3-D film technology firm RealD Inc. Other tenants include Concord Music Group, food and restaurant firm Wolfgang Puck Worldwide Inc. and California Republic Bank. Asking rents at the property are $5.61 a square foot a month, according to CoStar Group Inc., even higher than the average for the city.
Clarion declined to comment on the sale.
New York real estate firm Eastdil Secured represented Clarion in the transaction. The buyer was not represented.
Big in Manhattan
A Canadian developer snatched up a Manhattan Beach office property for roughly $96 million at auction last week.
Vancouver’s Onni Group, whose local properties include a 311,000-square-foot office building at 600 Wilshire Blvd. and extended-stay hotel Level DTLA, both in downtown Los Angeles, bought the Manhattan Towers, a pair of Class A office towers totaling about 310,000 square feet at 1230-40 Rosecrans Ave. The firm paid roughly $310 a square foot to the seller, CWCapital of Bethesda, Md.
Eastdil was marketing the property, but the auction was held on Irvine online real estate marketplace Auction.com’s website.
Kevin Carpenter, vice president of acquisitions at Onni, said the firm was interested in the tight market in Manhattan Beach and adding value to the property through top-tier management to make it perform better.
Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp. once occupied 76 percent of the property, but its departure in 2010 and the ongoing recession drove vacancies down and pushed the owner into default.
It was 43 percent occupied at the time of the sale.
Colony Subsidiary Bankruptcy
Colony Realty Partners, a Boston-based unit of L.A.’s Colony Capital, has petitioned for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for one of its fund’s subsidiaries.
Its CRP-2 Holdings AA holds a 10-property portfolio that includes office and industrial properties primarily located in and around Chicago and Washington, D.C. Those properties were not bringing in enough cash flow to pay noteholders.
The subsidiary’s outstanding balance on its loan from JP Morgan Chase was $163 million as of July 1. It also owed about $1.3 million in unpaid real estate taxes and $1.4 million in other unsecured claims, according to a reorganization plan filed in Chicago last month.
CRP-2 Holdings AA is trying to restructure its debt through the reorganization plan, which would repay its 204 creditors in full and extend the maturity of its secured debt to 2020. Under the plan, its parent fund would contribute up to $10 million.
The filing cited a slower recovery in areas where its properties are located, especially when compared with coastal cities.
The parent fund’s limited partners included the Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, New York City Retirement System, Verizon Communications and Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
Staff reporter Hannah Miet can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.
