Academy Tower Unloaded for $91 Million

San Francisco firm Swift Real Estate Partners has flipped the 175,000-square-foot structure office building at 5200 Lankershim Blvd. in North Hollywood for $91.3 million. A joint venture partnership paid Swift roughly $521 a square foot, which pencils out to a gain of more than 45 percent. Swift bought the office tower in 2016 for $62 million. Newmark Knight Frank’s Kevin Shannon, Ken White, Rob Hannan, Laura Stumm, and Michael Moll represented Swift in the transaction. Matthew Heyn and Caitlyn Hoffman of CBRE Group Inc. represented the buyers, Rockwood Capital and Artisan Realty Partners. The class A, eight-story office building, which includes ground-floor retail and a six-story parking structure, stands in the heart of the NoHo Arts District. Dubbed the Academy Tower, the 1991-opened site is adjacent to the home of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and is 80 percent leased as of sale time to over a dozen tenants, anchored by 51 Minds Entertainment, Lock and Key Productions, Starcom, Africa Channel and Stuntmen’s Association of Motion Pictures. The building sale comes at a time when the NoHo Arts District is seeing a lot of action on both the commercial and residential front. Office co-working leader WeWork recently signed a major lease along Lankershim Boulevard in excess of 40,000 square feet. Meanwhile, such developers as Strategic Legacy Investment Group, Summerland Partners, and nonprofit Abbey Road Inc. are currently planning and erecting hundreds of residential units along the corridor, while the joint venture of developers Merlone Geier Partners, of Lake Forest, and Los Angeles-based GPI Cos. is on track to deliver NoHo West, a major mixed-use project combining office, commercial and residential that will be anchored on the retail front by 24 Hour Fitness, Regal Cinemas, Urbane Café, Old Navy and Trader Joe’s. When finished, the 25-acre mixed-use NoHo West complex at 6150 Laurel Canyon Blvd. will encompass 642 apartments, 300,000 square feet of retail with up to 60 dining and shopping sites.