A long-term lease has been struck in Calabasas, keeping a longtime tenant in place in a hard-hit corner of the San Fernando Valley office market.
Grant & Weber, a receivables and resource management firm, signed a 10-year renewal for 27,000 feet at Corporate Center Calabasas, owned by landlord Lincoln Property Co.
The deal, which closed in March, is valued at about $7 million.
The Valley posted a 15.8 percent vacancy rate in the first quarter. Calabasas has particularly suffered because Bank of America has given back hundreds of thousands of feet of space previously occupied by mortgage lender Countrywide, which it purchased last year.
The pull-back by Bank of America has had a ripple effect on businesses that worked with the mortgage lender, creating even more vacant space, said Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s Bryan Lewitt.
“It’s one of the softest submarkets in the Los Angeles area that I am working in and I am working in five or six submarkets,” said Lewitt, who represented Grant & Weber.
The firm, which has offices in Sacramento; Las Vegas; and Scottsdale, Ariz., has been headquartered for 15 years at the 26575 W. Agoura Road building, where about 200 employees work in the second-floor offices.
The rental rate was not disclosed. But Tom Dwyer of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., who represented Lincoln, said that while the tenant’s “face rent is actually higher than it was before,” concessions given to the tenant made it “worthwhile” for them to stay at the property.
“The Lincoln property team really took the bull by the horns and gave them a great deal to stay,” Dwyer said.
The eight-building property includes a caf & #233; and gym. Ixia, a communications company, is the largest tenant at the 375,000-square-foot development.
Mark Raggio and Chris Isola of Cushman & Wakefield also represented the tenant. The landlord also was represented by Michael Slater and Jennifer Rice of CB Richard Ellis.
Beverly Hills Lease
Tom Ford, the designer’s eponymous fashion house, has begun building its new 10,000-square-foot retail space on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
It will be the company’s first store in the L.A.-area and its only U.S. outlet outside Madison Avenue in New York. The company signed a 10-year lease for space at 346 N. Rodeo Drive late last year. The rental rate was not disclosed, but the deal is said to be worth close to $30 million, according to a knowledgeable source.
The new store likely will open by the end of 2009, said Jay Luchs, who represented the landlord, ECA Capital Ltd. ECA, a Dublin, Ireland-based real estate investment group, used the 338-342 N. Rodeo Drive LLC name in the deal.
“(Ford) is a very-sought-after tenant who would not go just anywhere,” said Luchs of CB Richard Ellis. “Rodeo Drive is the second place he’d go after New York.”
The space, which will house a showroom on the ground and second floors, was formerly occupied by clothier Bernini, which left in January.
Kazuko Morgan of Cushman & Wakefield also represented the landlord. The tenant was represented by Laura Pomerantz of PBS Realty Advisors LLC. She and the tenant could not immediately be reached for comment.
New Firm
Mark Berman left his management position at tenant representation brokerage UGL Equis Corp. on April 20 and started a company the next day.
Berman, former manager of UGL Equis’ L.A. office, and Les Small, who formerly ran his own commercial brokerage, launched LesMark on April 21.
The partners said the West L.A. company, headquartered at 10960 Wilshire Blvd., will initially focus on commercial brokerage business. However, they plan to expand, with sights on an asset management business and a distressed debt fund. But they are prepared to wait until the time is right.
“We are of the opinion that you don’t do a deal until a deal makes sense,” said Small, who believes it might take two years for the commercial market to bottom out. “A lot of the very funds that are raising distressed debt now are the very same people who raised funds and overpaid for properties (in the past) that are now distressed.”
Small said that he and Berman, longtime business acquaintances, got serious about starting their own company just a month or two ago. That was when Berman was trying to convince Small to join UGL Equis.
“Mark was trying to recruit me to come to work with him there and I was not persuaded,” said Small, whose business in recent years largely focused on acquiring and managing properties on behalf of clients. “In a turnaround, I suggested to him that my goals and his goals could be better met by going our own way.”
Berman agreed. “I’ve been wanting for many years to start my own company,” he said.
Staff reporter Daniel Miller can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 263.
