Santa Monica Ocean Park Office Sells for $25.6 Million

Silicon Beach continues to wind its tentacles through Santa Monica. An office on Ocean Park Blvd. has just sold for more than double the amount it claimed in its last sale a decade ago.

Horizon Buildings Inc., a Santa Monica company that also owns the building next door, bought the site for $25.6 million, or about $600 a square foot. The seller was a joint venture between Buchanan Street Partners and Davenport Partners, which had bought the 44,500-square-foot property in 2006 for $11.4 million, or about $250 a square foot.

Now, the building is being marketed as a tech-friendly campus that could attract startups. One current tenant is Retention Science, a data-focused marketing firm. Just across the street, tech firms including game-maker Activision, music streaming service Pandora, and mobile ad company Amobee are clustered in an office park, helping create a Silicon Beach hub slightly inland from the hubbub in Playa Vista, Venice, and downtown Santa Monica.

“The potential to capture that and build upon it, that was the opportunity,” said Michael Longo, a CBRE broker who represented the seller along with Kevin Shannon, Ken White, and Rob Hannan -- former CBRE brokers who have since moved to Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.

Longo said Horizon will do a light renovation on the property, like sprucing up the interior courtyard, to attract further tech and startup tenants. The real estate firm, which owns several Southern California apartment complexes, was represented by Newmark broker Gibran Begum, and made the sale in a 1031 exchange to postpone paying capital gains tax on a recent property sale.

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