Douglas Emmett Acquires L.A. Office Tower in Lieu of Foreclosure
Blackstone Mortgage Trust provided a $62M loan to the REIT for the acquisition
By Nick Trombola January 28, 2025 5:57 pm
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The ownership of a 17-story building on Los Angeles’ Westside that once housed the late former Mayor Richard Riordan’s office has exchanged hands in lieu of foreclosure.
Douglas Emmett, a Santa Monica-based real estate investment trust, acquired Murdock Plaza at 10900 Wilshire Boulevard earlier this month from an affiliate of Tishman Speyer, according to property records. The Real Deal first reported the news.
The amount of unpaid debt on the property, coupled with costs, was about $131 million, records show, and Blackstone Mortgage Trust (BXMT) provided a $61.8 million loan to Douglas Emmett for the acquisition. Current tenants at the tower on the corner of Wilshire and Westwood boulevards include Casey Wasserman’s sports marketing and talent management firm, as well as Citibank and law firm Jacoby and Meyers.
Tishman in 2014 purchased the building for $125 million from Kambiz Hekmat, a local investor, and in 2021 secured a $122.7 million refinancing loan from BXMT toward the property, though that debt was transferred to special servicing in October due to imminent default, per TRD.
Representatives for Douglas Emmett did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for Tishman and for BXMT declined to comment.
The past six months or so were a bit of a mixed bag for Tishman Speyer in Southern California. The developer at the end of December sold a 133,000-square-foot property in Beverly Hills to Faring for $90 million — more than double what it paid for the building in 2005 — and in August sold a 175,000-square-foot property in the famed enclave to Richard Saghian’s Fashion Nova for $118 million.
Yet in June, the L.A. City Planning Commission ended entitlement proceedings for Tishman’s planned 217,000-square-foot mixed-use project in L.A.’s Arts District after the developer allowed its application to lapse. Tishman initially submitted the plans for approval in 2017, though dismal office activity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Downtown L.A., had clearly changed Tishman’s calculus.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
