New York Life Real Estate Investors has made a $131.3 million bet on Culver City.
Sources said the firm shelled out $300 a square foot on behalf of its institutional investors last month for 400 and 600 Corporate Pointe, two Class A office buildings that total 440,400 square feet.
It’s a hefty sum, but not much more than the $275 a square foot the seller, Chicago’s Pearlmark Real Estate Partners, paid when it purchased the buildings from Arden Realty Inc. in 2008. Back then, Pearlmark was doing business as Transwestern Investment Co.
The square-foot price was lower than the $490-a-square-foot average for the submarket, according to CoStar Group Inc., perhaps because the 17 percent vacancy rate across the two properties is 6 percent higher than the area average.
Tenants in the buildings include Sony Pictures Entertainment and cloud-based systems provider ADP. Reality TV production company T Group Productions will join the mix in January. It signed an eight-year, $5.1 million lease for 17,800 square feet at 600 Corporate Pointe last month. Avison Young’s Jacob Bobek represented the tenant in that lease. Madison Partners represented Pearlmark.
The new owner plans to upgrade and reposition the two buildings, said Chris Hunt, senior director at New York Life, in a statement.
It will renovate them in a fashion similar to its creative-office projects in Playa Vista, including giving the buildings a campuslike feel. The overhaul is expected to be completed in the spring.
Lincoln Property Co. will manage and lease the buildings.
Bob Safai of Madison represented Pearlmark in the sale. New York Life was not represented.
Buying Downtown History
After converting the historic PacMutual building in downtown Los Angeles into sought-after creative space and selling it for $200 million last month, downtown developer Rising Realty Partners and Houston real estate investment firm Lionstone Investments have purchased another old building in the submarket.
A partnership between Lionstone, London’s Hermes Investment Management and Rising shelled out just over $90 million, according to sources close to the deal, for One Bunker Hill, a 285,000-square-foot Class A office building at 601 W. Fifth St.
The buyers paid roughly $320 a square foot to seller Goodwin Gaw of GAW Capital Partners in an off-market deal that closed last week, sources said.
Rising will manage the property, which will be leased by Industry Partners. Carle Pierose and Jim Jacobson of Industry represented the buyer, while GAW was represented in-house.
Lionstone and Rising will reimagine the 14-story Art Deco building, last renovated in the early 1990s, as a creative-office campus with “high-class amenities you only see on the Westside,” Pierose said. The new team will also rip out drop ceilings and remove carpets to expose the bones of the building.
Built in 1930, it was once the Southern California Edison Co. Building.
The property is 91 percent leased by tenants that include engineering consulting and construction management firm HNTB Corp., watering hole Bunker Hill Bar & Grill and technology services firm ICF International.
Hollywood Lease
SIM Group, which provides services to the entertainment industry, signed a 10-year lease last month for 65,000 square feet at the Eastman Kodak Co. campus at 1017 N. Palmas Ave. in Hollywood. Sources said the lease is valued at almost $45 million.
When 100 employees from three companies under SIM’s umbrella move in in April, it will bring the property to 100 percent occupancy. The three-story campus, built by Kodak in 1999, will house SIM’s postproduction services arm, Chainsaw Productions, as well as SIM Digital and Bling Digital.
Chainsaw will relocate from 30,000 square feet it takes at 940 N. Orange Drive in Hollywood, but will maintain its West Hollywood location at 7017 Santa Monica Blvd., where it takes 9,000 square feet. SIM and Bling will leave 10,000 square feet they share at 738 N. Cahuenga Blvd. in Hollywood.
Kodak’s two-building, 110,000-square-foot campus was recently renovated by owner Lincoln Property.
Robert Kane, a Lincoln vice president, said the long-term lease is another sign Hollywood is desirable to companies at the intersection of technology and entertainment.
Matthew Miller of Cresa Los Angeles represented the tenant. Carl Muhlstein, Nicole Mihalka and Hayley Blockley of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. represented Lincoln.
Staff reporter Hannah Miet can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.
