$151M Sale of Westside Office Campus

A set of trophy creative office buildings in Southern California’s Silicon Beach market traded hands in one of the region’s priciest deals so far this year, according to brokerage firm Newmark, a sign of continued demand for quality office space on Los Angeles’ Westside.

Clarion Partners sold its 306,809-square-foot business center — known as the i|o campus — in L.A.’s Playa Vista neighborhood, to Barings for $150.7 million. The deal fetched one of the highest prices paid for a property in L.A. so far this year, according to Newmark, which facilitated the sale. ASB Real Estate Investments and Lincoln Property Company built the campus in 2010 and sold it to Clarion in 2014 for about $133 million. Clarion. Architecture firm Gensler redesigned the space in 2016. 

Newmark’s Kevin Shannon, Ken White, Rob Hannan, Laura Stumm and Michael Moll represented Clarion in the deal. 

“The response from institutional investors for i|o at Playa Vista was exceptionally strong — a clear sign that institutional capital is re-engaging in the office sector,” Shannon said in a statement. “The managed bid process was highly competitive which speaks to a broader sense of recovery in the capital markets for quality office product.”

The two-building campus at 12130 and 12180 Millennium Drive has maintained occupancy levels of 90 percent since its redesign, according to Newmark. Tenants at the property include the Honest Company, Samsung and WeWork. The campus is located about half a mile west of Interstate 405, and about four miles east of Playa Del Rey Beach. 

“Buyers embraced i|o’s rollover profile, which included significant near-term expirations,” Stumm added in a statement. “The willingness of institutional investors to take on leasing uncertainty is a clear vote of confidence in both the Playa Vista submarket and the broader office recovery. The market continues to reward high-quality assets, and this sale reinforces that trend.”

The sale is Clarion Partners’ second divestment in Playa Vista over the past year. The New York-based investment firm last May sold the 214-unit apartment complex, Reveal Playa Vista, to DivoWest for $122 million. Clarion had purchased the building in 2018 for $117.5 million, but L.A.’s ULA tax (5.5 percent on trades of over $10.3 million) meant that Clarion actually brought home only $114.7 million on its sale of the property. The firm’s sale of the i|o campus is also subject to the ULA tax. 

Despite the tax implications and dismal office numbers elsewhere in L.A., investors and tenants alike still want high quality office space in the region, particularly in tech-savvy areas like Silicon Beach or wealthy enclaves like Century City. Just last month, Fenway Capital Advisors paid $126 million for a majority stake in Entrada, a 347,000-square-foot trophy building in Culver City. 

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