Hakim Holdings has purchased a four-story, 61,000-square-foot Class B office building at 9350 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. The firm shelled out $48 million late last month to Lexington Commercial Holdings for the property in the city’s famed Golden Triangle.
Hakim Holdings, which owns and manages properties in New York and California, is led by brothers Alexander and Steven Hakim along with their father, Kambiz Hakim. The family firm wanted to relocate its offices from 1541 Ocean Ave. in Santa Monica, a building it also owns, to Beverly Hills, and thought buying the building was a good way to accomplish that goal. Hakim declined to reveal how much space it will take in the building.
After selling the property, Lexington downsized its space and is now leasing from Hakim.
Hakim paid roughly $800 a square foot for the 1950s-era building, which was last renovated in the 1990s. That’s lower than the roughly $1,000-a-square-foot average for the area. A nearby 118,400-square-foot Class A office property at 100 N. Crescent Drive sold to Greenwich, Conn., private investment firm Cain Hoy Enterprises for $1,100 a square foot in July.
Hakim plans to renovate the property then lease the office space at higher rates as space becomes available. Asking rents at the property are $5 a square foot a month.
The building is 19 percent vacant, higher than the Beverly Hills average of 7 percent, due to unleased space left over when Lexington downsized.
Hakim represented itself in the off-market deal. Chris DuMont and Brent Bissel of Madison Partners represented Lexington, operating vehicle for the family of Louis Gonda, a founder of International Lease Finance Corp.
Representatives of Lexington could not be reached for comment.
BuzzFeed Bust
It had a long run in the rumor mill, but the buzz was misleading. BuzzFeed will not be moving into Shorenstein Properties’ Ford Motor Factory Building after all.
After months of discussion regarding the New York media and entertainment firm taking more than 200,000 square feet at the 300,000-square-foot building at 2060 E. Seventh St. in downtown L.A.’s Arts District, the deal did not close and both sides walked away.
Both Shorenstein and BuzzFeed declined to comment on why the deal died.
BuzzFeed, which recently received a $200 million investment from NBCUniversal that valued the firm at roughly $1.5 billion, is still looking for a space that will suit the company’s planned expansion and potential consolidation of its four L.A. offices.
Meantime, the roughly 230 employees in BuzzFeed’s L.A. video department will relocate from the 40,000 square feet the company takes at Kilroy Realty Corp.’s Hollywood campus on De Longpre Avenue across from the ArcLight Cinema complex, a BuzzFeed spokeswoman said.
Starting in mid-October, the department will occupy the entirety of Siren Studios’ roughly 52,000-square-foot media campus at 6063 W. Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, the spokeswoman said.
BuzzFeed and Siren Studios declined to comment on the terms of the deal.
There are few large properties able to accommodate the amount of space BuzzFeed ultimately seeks for its consolidation. Among potential options are the Pen Factory in Santa Monica, the Brickyard in Playa Vista and the Pacific Design Center’s Red Building in West Hollywood.
Until a space is found, the other three BuzzFeed offices in Los Angeles will not move, the spokeswoman said.
The company takes 22,000 square feet at Kilroy’s Sunset Media Center at 6255 W. Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood for its branded-content department. The company’s editorial office is on 7323 Beverly Blvd. in L.A.’s Fairfax District and the sales team takes 1,900 square feet in a single-tenant office building at 608 Main St. in Venice.
Once BuzzFeed’s video department exits, Kilroy will begin redeveloping the De Longpre site, dubbed the Academy, into a 260,000-square-foot mixed-use creative office campus. The project, which will break ground next year, will include a high-rise residential tower with roughly 200 units, about 20,000 square feet of retail as well as low-rise creative office buildings, said David Simon, executive vice president at Kilroy.
Molina Expansion
Long Beach’s fast-growing managed care provider Molina Healthcare Inc. recently signed a deal that will expand its footprint on its home turf.
The company signed a 73,500-square-foot lease for office space at One World Trade Center, a 27-story, 574,000-square foot office complex at 701 W. Ocean Blvd. downtown. The facility will serve as an expansion for the company’s corporate headquarters at 200 Oceangate Ave.
Lease terms were not disclosed, but recent rent rates at the building recorded by CoStar Group Inc. value the lease at $2.4 million a year.
Landlords Greenlaw Partners, Walton Street Capital and Stillwater Investment Group acquired the property in August for $105 million and are in the process of finalizing plans for a large-scale renovation.
Steve Solomon, Jason Fine and Kristen Bowman of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., along with Dave Smith of CBRE Group Inc. represented the landlords in the lease deal. Molina was represented by Damion McKinney and Jamie Keller of McKinney Advisory Group.
Staff reporter Hannah Miet can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.
