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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Big Deals: Projects, People That Made Real Estate News

Big Deals: Projects, People That Made Real Estate News 2001 – A Year of Change A few deals broke ground and some got dragged through the mud, but all things considered, 2001 was not a bad year for San Fernando Valley real estate. Here, a look at some of the highlights: Relatively Speaking Beacon Capital Partners acquired the Trillium towers in Warner Center for about $134 million. In addition to the two towers, with about 600,000 square feet, the property included the land on which the 318-room Hilton Woodland Hills & Towers sits. The deal amounted to about $195 per square foot of rentable space, a hefty sum, but it didn’t compare to what the previous owner paid at the height of the commercial real estate market a decade earlier. At that time, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the sellers of the property, paid about $200 million. Futuristic View The “I can see clearly” award should probably go to Tishman International Co. In 2001, the developer sold its 21st Century Plaza twin towers to Bentley Forbes Group for about $120 million. When Tishman began construction on the 517,000-square-foot high rise office complex, rents in the area were ranging between $2.15 and $2.25 per square foot. Tishman would have to charge about $2.50 per square foot for the space, a premium that at the time seemed out of reach. But soon after completing construction, Tishman inked deals with Aetna U.S. Healthcare and Regus Business Center Corp., which along with 21st Century Insurance, for which the complex was named, brought the buildings to full occupancy. Bentley Forbes bought the towers shortly thereafter. The Rich and Famous John E. Anderson, the octogenarian multi-millionaire entrepreneur for whom the UCLA business school is named, went on a buying spree in 2001, focusing on tony Westlake Village. Under the aegis of Duesenberg Investment Co., Anderson acquired four office properties: the 81,500-square-foot Westlake Plaza III office complex at 2815 Townsgate Road, the 115,720-square-foot Westlake Plaza Centre, a 41,307-square-foot office building at 200 N. Westlake Blvd. and another at 100 N. Westlake Blvd. The purchase price for Westlake Plaza Center was reported to be $22 million, the two buildings on North Westlake Boulevard were said to sell in the $225-per-square-foot range while the Townsgate Road property went for about $245 per square foot. Record Setting Adler Realty Advisors Inc. acquired the 156,696-square-foot Legacy Oaks Corporate Centre in Thousand Oaks for $24 million. At about $155 per square foot, it was considered to be one of the highest prices paid for an office property in Conejo Valley. The sellers, Legacy Partners, had owned the center, built in the early 1980s, for about two years. Chip of the Block Douglas, Emmett & Co. acquired a 60,000-square-foot office building in Sherman Oaks for $12.5 million. The deal was the latest in a series of acquisitions that gave Douglas, Emmett ownership of nearly every property at the intersection of Ventura and Sepulveda boulevards. The British Are Coming Grosvenor, a San Francisco-based affiliate of a British investment company, acquired Warner Center Corporate Center, a 253,000-square-foot high rise building, for about $42 million, a bargain if you compare it to the $70 million the sellers, Nomura Real Estate, were said to have paid for the property in 1990. Then again, the 12-story building had a 25-percent vacancy rate when Grosvenor bought it. Shopping News Caruso Affiliated Holdings beat out J.H. Snyder Co. to become the developer of the $150-million Town Center in Glendale. Caruso won the project from the city of Glendale, which owns about half the 15 acres on which the project will be built. Go Figure You might have thought a prime corner parcel smack in the middle of the Warner Center commercial hub would surely get picked up by a developer of office projects. But the property at 6150 Canoga Ave., idle since the Northridge Earthquake, was acquired instead by The Morgan Group Inc., a Houston-based developer of multi-family housing. It turned out that a commercial developer would have to incur a number of high fees in order to build on the property, costs that a residential developer did not have to bear. So Morgan’s offer was the best that the property owner, Dick Aronoff, received. Morgan plans to build about 154 luxury apartments on the property. A Ground-Breaking Event Spirit Properties broke ground on what it claimed is the largest business park to be developed in Los Angeles County in five years. The 240-acre industrial park, which will accommodate 3 million square feet of space, is in the Santa Clarita Valley near the intersection of Ruether Avenue and Redview Drive. Spirit plans to market three spec buildings, along with build-to-suit facilities and land parcels in the complex, which it is calling Centre Pointe Business Park. In Play The largest contiguous piece of property in L.A. went on the block in 2001. Warner Center Properties, a 2.3-million-square-foot development that spans about 50 acres, is being sold by its owners, Harvard University’s endowment fund and Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. The two have jointly owned the property for about 10 years, through the recession when one of the buildings, the 25-story Warner Center tower, went vacant for years. The deal, which has some of the biggest real estate players in the nation sniffing around, is not for the faint of heart. Warner Center Properties is expected to fetch $400 million or more.

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