Beer Building's Big Sale at 34-38 Mason
We've got the scoop on a feel-good Midmarket sale story to get the New Year started off right.
A boutique creative office and retail space at 34-38 Mason just traded for about $6M to a Taiwan-based investor operating under the entity Venice Beach Townhome, the seller tells us. It's a small 12k SF sale for the market, but the profit for seller Citrine Advisors was huge. Citrine president Jerry Smith tells us the back story.
An investment group that includes Oakland-based Citrine first bought the bank-owned asset in October 2010 as a vacant building with a checkered past, whose prior tenants included the Power Exchange and Crash Club--a night club with jacuzzis. At the time, Citrine leveraged two tenants it had in its pocket: public affairs firm Barbary Coast Consulting and beer cafe Mikkeller, above, which is situated on the ground floor of the 1907 Victorian building.
Jerry, above at our recent Oakland Construction & Development event, says Citrine assembled a group of investors that included the principals of both tenants' businesses to acquire the property for $3.2M. After investing an additional $300k in improvements and stabilizing the asset, the group was able to sell in December for a $2.5M profit (or 70% appreciation, in just over two years). The seller was repped by Tony Crossley and Erik Hanson of Colliers. There's a New Year's resolution for you: Be patient for a profit.
