An office building in Beverly Hills’ Golden Triangle traded hands for $80 million this month, the highest price for any one Westside office building since 2010.
New York real estate investment firm Clarion Partners LLC bought the 120,000-square-foot property, at 100 N. Crescent Drive, from Clarity Realty Partners LLC in Beverly Hills in an off-market transaction. Clarity purchased the property for $37 million in 2000.
The marble-clad, four-story building on Wilshire Boulevard is nearly fully occupied. Built in 1989, the building has a large lobby and atrium as well as a 100-seat screening room.
The sale price of $80 million, or $667 a square foot, is among the top prices for an office building in the Westside submarket in the last two years. It is the highest sale price of any one office building in the city of Beverly Hills in the last decade, according to CoStar Group Inc.
Dean Rostovsky, Clarion’s director of acquisitions in Los Angeles, said that the building had several physical and geographic features that made it attractive to his company.
“It’s in a great submarket and the history of fundamentals in Beverly Hills is excellent,” he said. “And the reason for that is fantastic supply restriction.”
Clarion advises and invests on behalf of 200 institutional clients. It owns about 80 office buildings globally, including the 249,000-square-foot office building at 3500 W. Olive Ave. in Burbank and a 201,000-square-foot office building at 2220 Colorado Ave. in Santa Monica.
The Crescent Drive building is its first purchase in Beverly Hills. It plans to operate the building as is and hold it long term.
Highmark Advisors Inc. President Drew Hild represented both sides of the deal.
Silicon Beach Bumps
Creative office space in the Santa Monica-Venice market boasted the second highest asking rents of all the major tech markets nationwide in the third quarter this year.
The market, sometimes referred to as Silicon Beach, asked $3.63 a square foot, trailing only Massachusetts’ East Cambridge neighborhood near Boston at $3.93, according to research by Transwestern senior research analyst Arty Maharajh. He tracked nine major tech markets from Boston to Silicon Valley and compared their rates and vacancy over the last two years.
Creative space in Manhattan had asking rates of $3.49, while Silicon Valley rates were $2.45. L.A. rates, however, shot up the second highest of any of the major tech markets, jumping 15 percent year over year.
Maharajh said one reason for the high rates in Silicon Beach is a low 9 percent vacancy rate in the 3.6 million-square-foot market.
“There’s high demand for space and not as much availability,” he said.
He added that he doesn’t see this trend slowing down anytime soon either, given how much the entertainment-driven tech companies want to be in Los Angeles.
Having It All
Three women in L.A.’s commercial real estate field are being honored for their ability to balance work, life and play.
The L.A. chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women, a U.S. and Canadian trade and networking organization for women in the industry, each year hands out its Women at the Top awards. This year, the group identified the honorees for achievements in their profession as well as their philanthropic and personal pursuits.
The honorees include Susan Booth, partner in the law firm of Holland & Knight; Christine Deschaine, principal at Lee & Associates – LA North/Ventura, Inc.; and Tori Robinson, vice president, Old Republic Title Co.
“This year our theme is Art of Balance, (which) recognizes the immense effort it takes on a variety of personal, social and business levels for women to rise to the top in any profession, not the least commercial real estate,” said Trudi J. Lesser, the organization’s president and a commercial real estate attorney.
CREW-L.A. will present the awards Thursday at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Staff reporter Jacquelyn Ryan can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.
