Pasadena is heating up.
In the latest deal to hit the market, Zurich Alternative Asset Management last week sold its office building at 350 W. Colorado Blvd. for $34 million to an unnamed investment group. That deal, at $385 a square foot, was well above the average of $293 a foot paid last year in the submarket.
The 88,304-square-foot office building, known as the Wells Fargo Bank Building, is 98 percent leased by Wells Fargo, West L.A. professional services firm Holthouse Carlin & Van Trigt and others.
Bob Safai, president of Madison Partners, who represented the seller in the deal along with Matt Case and Brad Schlaak, said the property sold higher than other comparable assets because it has “a great rent roll in a prime location.”
Safai said many interested parties bid on the building.
“Pasadena is attracting investors,” he said. “The tech revolution taking place in the Tri-Cities is for the most part taking place in Pasadena.”
The deal follows the March purchase by Carey Watermark Investors Inc., a New York real estate investment trust, of the Westin Pasadena hotel at 191 N. Los Robles Ave. for $143 million, or about $408,000 a room.
In addition, a medical office building adjacent to Huntington Memorial Hospital sold last week to Congress Management Associates, a Pasadena physician investment group, for nearly $11 million, according to Michael Dettling of Avison Young, who represented the buyer.
The group purchased the 20,000-square-foot Class B property at 39 Congress St. for roughly $550 a square foot from a partnership formed by the family of the late Dr. George L. Mulfinger, who built the building in 1984. The per-square-foot price was $257 a square foot more than the average sale price for all office buildings in the submarket last year, according to CoStar Group Inc.
“The group paid so much because they can expand the building by 8,000 square feet and plan to occupy a portion of the building in the future,” Dettling said.
The building is 100 percent leased.
“Medical buildings on or adjacent to major hospital campuses are selling at very high prices today,” Dettling said.
