7 of the Biggest Los Angeles Stories in 2015
It's been a huge year for LA, from institutional money continuing to pour in to a potential return of the St. Louis Rams or Oakland Raiders to the teams' former home. We chose a few highlights that made big headlines last year.
Among the biggest news of the year was the announcement of a potential return of the NFL to LA with St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke proposing to build a stadium in Inglewood at the old Hollywood Park racetrack site.
Meanwhile, the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers presented their own plans to construct and share a stadium in Carson. The City of Carson approved the $1.7B plan. In November, it was announced that Disney CEO Bob Iger would lead Carson’s NFL stadium effort.
All three teams have officially applied for relocation as of this week.
In November, Blackstone Group was in talks to sell four towers in LA for more than $1B to Santa Monica-based Douglas Emmett, one of the largest landlords on the West Coast.
Bisnow sources tell us Douglas Emmett has been eyeing the portfolio for years, with the REIT eager to pick up the Westside assets. The towers total about 1.7M SF of prime space in LA, three of which are on Wilshire Boulevard (10940 Wilshire seen here) with the fourth in Westwood.
The deal would be a major expansion for Douglas Emmett and would represent one of the largest office sales on the West Coast in years.
In July, DreamWorks Animation’s Glendale campus was sold for $215M to El Segundo-based Griffin Capital Essential Asset REIT. Earlier in the year, the 15-acre property was purchased by SunTrust Equity Funding, which is affiliated with SunTrust Banks in Atlanta, for $185M.
DreamWorks had remained a tenant at the complex. The 497k SF campus is made up of six buildings, in addition to food concessions and significant outdoor space.
In September, Rising Realty Partners sold the historic PacMutual building downtown for $200M in what was one of the most successful commercial office flips in local history.
The company had acquired the property four years ago. PacMutual was sold to Chicago-based Callahan Capital Properties and Montreal-based Ivanhoé Cambridge.
Chris Rising (here with father Nelson Rising) tells us the firm gave about 100 tours and received 20 offers in the few months it's been on the market. Eastdil Secured handled marketing at the 464k SF building, and paired with Industry Partners, which worked the roughly 100 leases signed at the building in the last three years.
In June, billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian died at the age of 98. He was, at one time, the richest person in Los Angeles and was known for investing in Las Vegas casinos and in the car industry.
Kirk once owned the Bellagio and the Mirage in Las Vegas. His net worth was $4.2B, according to Forbes.
Kirk was one of many West Coast real estate titans who died last year, including Doug Shorenstein, Fred Sands and Scott T. Carey.
It was another big year for Playa Vista, perhaps highlighted in February when Shorenstein Properties and Jeff Worthe sold The Reserve (here) to Invesco for $300M. The JV bought the old US Postal Service facility nearly five years ago for $44M.
They also added amenities, including a sand volleyball court, a fitness center and a car wash. Top tenants include Microsoft, TMZ and Sony Playstation.
In addition, a new $100M senior housing development in Playa Vista known as the Fountainview at Gonda Westside is nearing completion with 100% of its units already reserved. The project is in Runway, a $260M mixed-use complex. Both projects are just a snippet of the momentum and increased capital flowing into Playa Vista, which really hit critical mass late in 2014, when Google got in on the action.
In November, CIM Group bought the former Sears store site in Hollywood from Continental Development Group. The plans for the five-acre site, which is at Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilton Place, could include more than 300k SF of dedicated retail space and 700 apartments. CIM Group paid $43.5M for the land.
