The Beverly Hills office market doesn’t appear to be weakening any time soon, and the proof is in the comps.
Beverly Hills investment manager Kennedy Wilson Properties paid $38 million late last month for a fully leased 42,400-square-foot Class B office building at 9350 Civic Center Drive. The real estate firm handed the seller, a group of trusts led by Kimberly Ann Wood Trust, almost $900 a square foot for the property.
The per-square-foot price topped one of the most recent comparable transactions in the tight submarket, Hakim Holdings’ purchase of 9350 Wilshire Blvd. for $800 a square foot. It did not, however, top Cain Hoy’s purchase of 100 N. Crescent Drive for almost $1,100 a square foot last quarter.
Built in 1947, the brick warehouse was updated to attract creative tenants in 2001 by Santa Barbara architecture firm Barton Myers Associates, which added a steel structural frame, a second floor and a rooftop parking deck.
It is currently home to concert giant Live Nation Entertainment. In 2013, the firm signed a 10-year lease to expand its headquarters into 33,100 square feet at the building, as the company had overgrown the space it occupies at the adjacent 9348 Civic Center building. Nashville, Tenn., guitar manufacturer Gibson Guitar Corp. uses the remaining 9,300 square feet for an instrument showroom.
Martin McDermott and Neil Resnick of Avison Young’s Westwood office represented the seller. Kennedy acquired the property through a bidding process that required no broker.
The buyer, seller and brokers did not respond to requests for comment.
At 6 percent, Beverly Hills had the lowest vacancy rate on the Westside in the third quarter, with asking rents at more than $5 a square foot. Average vacancy sat at 14.5 percent on the Westside as a whole, with asking rates at $4.39 a square foot.
Malibu Gold
Kym Gold, co-founder of Manhattan Beach high-end denim company True Religion Apparel Inc., sold her Malibu estate last week for $18.5 million to an undisclosed couple.
The 6,600-square-foot property rang in at almost $2,800 a square foot. The home, at 24910 Pacific Coast Highway, boasts a master suite that opens to a pool deck and ocean views, four other large bedrooms and a guest suite on 1.5 acres of land on a bluff.
It far surpassed the $890-a-square-foot median sale price in the 90265 ZIP code over the past 90 days, according to Seattle listings website Redfin. But it came in significantly below the asking price of $26.5 million. T.J. Paradise of Sotheby’s International Realty’s Malibu office, who represented Gold along with Amy Alcini, said that was to be expected.
“We wanted to be aggressive when we listed it,” he said. “We were testing the market. It’s really hard when pricing these one-of-a-kind estates and the seller wasn’t in any rush.”
The property, Paradise said, sits on the same strip where singer Cher has a house. The site’s grounds include an organic garden, a paddle tennis court, a putting green and a meditation garden. It has its own steps down to Malibu Road Beach.
Gold bought the property with her True Religion co-founder and then-husband, Jeff Lubell, for $8 million in 2005.
Gold left True Religion in 2007 to become a consultant. She declined to comment on the sale.
Deal Roundup
Beverly Hills’ NSB Associates paid roughly $14 million, or $300 a square foot, to Toronto space hardware designer Com Dev International for a vacant 47,000-square-foot Class B industrial manufacturing building on 2.3 acres of land in El Segundo. That adds to the more than 300,000 square feet it acquired nearby in the last five years. Com Dev occupied the building at 2333 Utah Ave. until April, when it closed down its L.A. operation after laying off 65 workers due to a lack of government contracts, said Jeff Codispodi, director of investor relations for the company. NSB will lease the building on a short-term basis, leaving other options open for the longer term. Andrew Riley of CBRE Group Inc. represented Com Dev. Kevin Shannon, Michael Moore and Bill Bloodgood of CBRE represented NSB.
Staff reporter Hannah Miet can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.
