A Westside investor group bought one of the tallest buildings in the low-rise Fairfax district this month.
Beverly Quest LLC bought the six-story office building at 8201 Beverly Blvd. near West Hollywood for $14.4 million from L.A. cancer care services provider Aptium Oncology Inc.
Aptium has occupied all of the nearly 39,000-square-foot building since purchasing it in 1996 for almost $14.7 million. The company wanted to sell the building because it is shutting down this office branch.
The recent sale price, at roughly $371 a square foot, is a midmarket rate for buildings in a two-mile radius of its location between La Cienega Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in the last two years, according to CoStar Group Inc.
Built in 1964, the former data center building was significantly renovated in the early 1990s by New York’s Morphosis Architects Inc. to include a granite façade, floor-to-ceiling windows and a top-floor gym. Its design won two awards from the American Institute of Architects in 1992.
Parking is located on the first two floors of the building as well as an exterior lot at Harper Avenue, giving it one of the highest parking ratios in the area.
The Beverly Quest investor group was syndicated by South Park Group President Jack Ravan. It plans to convert some, if not all, of the building into creative office space.
Steve Ravan, senior vice president at South Park and nephew of Jack, represented the buyers in the deal and will hold the listings for the office space for the new owners.
He said the location and high quality of the building should make it easy to attract tenants.
The seller was represented by Martin McDermott of Avison Young.
Dirt Cheap
Not everything is selling for record prices in Santa Monica.
L.A.’s Pacshore Partners LLC bought 214,000 square feet of land at 3211 Olympic Blvd., at the Santa Monica Media Park, for $18.6 million this month. The seller was Phoenix-based Four Fold LP, which has owned it since 2009.
At $86 a square foot, the price is the lowest in Santa Monica this year – in large part because the land is not readily available for development.
The land is under existing buildings that are owned under a ground lease with Redwood Partners Inc. in Newport Beach. The buildings are occupied by creative tenants such as production company Illumination Entertainment. Financial terms of the ground lease were not disclosed.
John Bertram, executive managing director at Studley who represented the buyer, said that Pacshore liked the property because it can immediately begin receiving income through the ground lease, which has more than 30 years left on the term. But one of the largest attractions to the property was that it was for sale at all in the prime market of Santa Monica.
“There’s not vacancy anywhere and there’s just not a lot of large blocks of lands to buy or buildings to lease; it’s very difficult to find the opportunities,” Bertram said.
The company plans to hold on to the land long term.
Jim Jacobsen at Industry Partners also represented the buyer. Tom Cherry at CBRE Group Inc. represented the seller.
Corporate Move
St. Louis brokerage Cassidy Turley Inc., which opened its first L.A. office this year, has hired Lee Black to become the outpost’s executive managing director and principal.
Black was executive vice president of NAI Capital in Los Angeles for the last six years.
Cassidy Turley has been quickly expanding in Los Angeles, growing from five employees to 19 with plans to continue to increase.
Black will be second-in-command in the L.A. office, under Regional Managing Principal Jonathan Larsen.
Black has closed more than 12 million square feet of deals in his 27 years of commercial real estate experience. He has held a variety of senior positions, including serving as managing principal of then-named Newmark Knight Frank’s Southern California region and as an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield.
“Lee is an important addition to our Los Angeles metro team,” Larsen said. “He exemplifies our effort to draw top-caliber executives who provide best-of-class service to our clients locally, regionally and nationally.”
Staff reporter Jacquelyn Ryan can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.
