A Canadian developer snatched up a Manhattan Beach office property for roughly $96 million at auction last week.

Vancouver’s Onni Group, whose local properties include a 311,000-square-foot office building at 600 Wilshire Blvd. and extended-stay hotel Level DTLA, both in downtown Los Angeles, bought the Manhattan Towers, a pair of Class A office towers totaling about 310,000 square feet at 1230-40 Rosecrans Ave. The firm paid roughly $310 a square foot to the seller, CWCapital of Bethesda, Md.

Eastdil was marketing the property, but the auction was held on Irvine online real estate marketplace Auction.com’s website.

Kevin Carpenter, vice president of acquisitions at Onni, said the firm was interested in the tight market in Manhattan Beach and adding value to the property through top-tier management to make it perform better.

Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp. once occupied 76 percent of the property, but its departure in 2010 and the ongoing recession drove vacancies down and pushed the owner into default.

It was 43 percent occupied at the time of the sale.