Prominent Retail Property in L.A.’s Koreatown Transferred to Lender at Auction

A prominent Los Angeles retail center that anchors part of the city’s dense Koreatown enclave has traded hands at auction for the second time in just five years after its owner defaulted on loans tied to the property.

California Market, an 83,000-square-foot shopping plaza in L.A.’s Koreatown neighborhood, sold for $29.2 million earlier this month after former owner Jake Sharp Capital in January defaulted on its debt. The plaza, at 450 South Western Avenue, was transferred to its lender, an affiliate of Columbia Pacific Advisors.

Columbia provided Jake Sharp Capital a $52.5 million acquisition loan for Sharp’s $57.5 million purchase of California Market in late 2020. The property — previously owned by Hyun S. Rhee, widow of the late supermarket chain founder Richard Rhee — sold at a live auction in bankruptcy court at the time. 

Representatives for Columbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Jake Sharp Capital could not be reached. 

The property in 1987 became the first Korean supermarket in Southern California, according to its website. Other tenants there include restaurants Gaju Gimbop, Two Hands Seoul Fresh Corn Dogs and Thanks Pizza, as well as other small businesses such as Etude W Salon and Guardian Computer Repairs. 

During the 1992 Rodney King Riots, the building became a landmark during a part of a dark chapter in L.A.’s history. When the streets of Los Angeles erupted in widespread riots and looting, which lasted for six days and ultimately took the lives of 63 people, Koreatown became the epicenter for much of the carnage, with an estimated 2,200 Korean-American owned businesses suffering hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. 

Rhee and his fellow business owners at California Market ultimately took the protection of their stores into their own hands, barricading the market and patrolling the rooftop with firearms to ward off looters, preventing major damage of the property. 

These days, Koreatown shows little evidence of the destruction it suffered more than 30 years ago, lately becoming a hive of investment and increased multifamily development activity. Much of that activity is centered around Jamison, the ubiquitous firm that owns and operates more than 18 million square feet of real estate across the city.

Just this week, a Jamison affiliate landed a $50 million refinancing package from Affinius Capital toward The Roya, a 157-unit multifamily property it owns in Koreatown less than a mile south of California Market. The firm is also heavily focused on adaptive reuse projects, particularly office-to-residential conversions. Jamison and partner Arc Capital Partners are in the midst of transforming a 13-story office property at 3325 Wilshire Boulevard into 236 units with 15,000 square feet of retail space.

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.