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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Tenants Burrowing Into Vacant Mouse House

A North Hollywood office building that has sat largely empty since Walt Disney Co.’s Interactive division moved out in November has gotten a boost with some new leases. The building, at 5161 Lankershim Blvd., will soon be home to Bento Box Entertainment Inc. which signed a 25,535-square-foot lease, and Landmark Appraisal Services which is taking 13,000 square feet. The four-story, 167,151-square-foot Class A office building was constructed in 1985, but underwent renovations in 1997. “We think it’s a great building in a great area and we’re looking forward to the move,” said Erik Richard, chief executive of Landmark, a real estate appraisal company. The building had been 100 percent occupied by Disney Interactive, which relocated to the company’s headquarters in Burbank after a downsizing of the division. Meanwhile, Bento Box, the animation studio behind Fox Network’s “Bob’s Burgers,” is moving in the opposite direction, from Burbank to the new building, along with roughly 150 employees. Financial terms of the leases were not disclosed, but space in the building averages $31.80 per square foot, according to CoStar Group Inc., a Washington D.C.-based data provider. Still, the moves leave the prominent building at Lankershim and Magnolia boulevards 75 percent vacant. Patrick Church, a senior vice president at CBRE Group Inc.’s Universal City office, believes the building will fill up in the next year. “We have more activity than we have space,” he said. “We have some corporate users looking at it, but the bulk of the companies interested are entertainment-related.” The building is owned by Los Angeles real estate development and investment firm Jamison Services Inc. Anneke Greco, a vice president at CBRE’s Universal City office, is also representing the property. County Consolidation The largest vacant office building in Ventura County may finally be getting a new tenant. The 240,000-square-foot space in Simi Valley was the former home of Farmers Insurance Group, but has sat empty since the company combined its offices in Warner Center in 2012. (This month, Farmers announced it was moving its headquarters from Wilshire Boulevard to those offices too.) Farmers has a lease on the building until 2017, but has retained Costa Mesa property management firm UGL Services to help sublease it. Farmers has said it would be willing to subdivide the space into smaller tenancies, and earlier this year a representative told the Simi Valley City Council that it had retained an architect to facilitate that if leases were signed. Now, according to Simi Valley Economic Development Director Brian Gabler, the County of Ventura is looking to take space in the building at 3039 Cochran St. “From what I understand, the county is talking to the building owner and has expressed interest in taking over part of the building and relocating some functions it has in various offices around the area and bringing them together,” he said. The county is looking at taking roughly a third of building, or 80,000 square feet, according to Gabler. UGL and the county did not return calls. Pricey Property A 2,310-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bath condo in the popular Collection complex in Burbank has sold for $630,000, the highest price for a condo in the city since 2008. Unit 517 was placed on the market in April, and spent just seven days there before landing in escrow. “We received more than a dozen bids in a week, and all but two of them were over the asking price,” said Alisa Cunningham of Teles Properties Inc., who represented the seller. The Collection is a mixed-use complex at 250 First St. across from the AMC 16 movie theater with 118 condos on three stories and ground-level retail shops. The condos, built by Los Angeles developer Bob Champion and his Champion Real Estate Co., hit the market in 2008 and had nearly sold out when the banking crisis hit the market. The remaining units were offered at steep discounts, up to 40 percent off the original asking prices. “(Unit 517) was the second-to-last condo to sell when they were originally on the market,” said Cunningham, who also brokered that deal. “The owner did very well because she got it at that discount. She bought it in November 2011 for $549,000 and just sold it for $630,000, so I guess that means things are going OK.” Staff reporter Kelly Goff can be reached at (818) 316-3135 or [email protected].

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