The county of Los Angeles has tentatively agreed to purchase the Fuel Firm Tower, a outstanding workplace skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles, for $215 million in a foreclosures sale.
The worth is a deep low cost from its appraised worth of $632 million in 2020, underscoring how a lot downtown workplace values have fallen in recent times.
The Board of Supervisors should nonetheless approve the deal, which county actual property officers quietly however aggressively negotiated. If accomplished, the acquisition might transfer employees and public companies out of present county places of work, together with the well-known Kenneth Hahn Corridor of Administration, which dates to 1960, in accordance with a number of individuals accustomed to the transaction who requested they not be named so as to focus on the confidential negotiations.
The county has begun the due diligence technique of analyzing the property for doable structural issues or different points earlier than finalizing the transaction, which might take two to a few months to finish, the sources mentioned.
In a press release to The Instances, the county mentioned that it had submitted a nonbinding “letter of curiosity” for the tower.
“As a result of we’re seeing once-in-a-generation value reductions for industrial actual property within the downtown space, as accountable stewards of public funds, the County is doing its due diligence and evaluating the opportunity of buying property within the Civic Middle space, such because the Fuel Firm Tower,” the assertion mentioned.
Supervisor Janice Hahn, who’s the daughter of longtime supervisor Kenneth Hahn, mentioned in a separate assertion to The Instances that she isn’t totally on board with the acquisition.
“I’m uncomfortable with the County shifting ahead buying this skyscraper till I perceive the CEO’s full plan which I’ve but to see. I’m positively towards shifting County companies away from Los Angeles’ solely Civic Middle,” she mentioned.
The Fuel Firm Tower represents “a generational funding alternative to amass a trophy asset at an distinctive foundation,” Andrew Harper, a dealer with the true property agency JLL, mentioned in Could when JLL was employed to market the property. JLL declined to remark Tuesday on the pending sale.
The 52-story tower at 555 W. fifth St. was extensively thought of one of many metropolis’s most prestigious workplace buildings when it was accomplished in 1991. It has about 1.4 million sq. ft of house on a 1.4-acre website on the base of Bunker Hill.
Lately the downtown workplace market has turned towards landlords as many tenants lowered their workplace footprint in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it grew to become extra frequent for workers to work remotely.
Final 12 months, the proprietor of the Fuel Firm Tower, an affiliate of Brookfield Asset Administration Ltd., defaulted on its debt and the property was put in receivership, through which a court-appointed consultant took custody of the constructing to assist collectors get better funds they lent to Brookfield. The constructing has roughly $465 million in excellent loans.
Elevated rates of interest have weighed on costs by making it troublesome for constructing homeowners to refinance debt and pushing them into fast gross sales or foreclosures. Some downtown L.A. workplace tenants have expressed concern in recent times that the streets really feel much less protected than they did earlier than the pandemic and have left for different native workplace facilities together with Century Metropolis.
The Fuel Firm Tower was renovated in 2023 and the tower at present is greater than half leased to tenants together with Southern California Fuel Co., monetary consulting agency Deloitte and regulation agency Latham & Watkins, in accordance with actual property knowledge supplier CoStar.
Workplace emptiness in downtown Los Angeles was greater than 30% within the second quarter, actual property brokerage CBRE mentioned, greater than triple the extent sometimes thought of to be a wholesome stability between tenant and landlord pursuits.
Falling workplace values downtown are catching the eye of patrons looking for to seize property at a low level out there, mentioned Petra Durnin, an actual property analyst at Elevate Industrial Actual Property who isn’t concerned within the deal.
“Unlucky conditions can create alternatives for others with the money,” Durnin mentioned. “Downtown has been by means of increase and bust cycles earlier than and at all times reinvented itself.”
A close-by 52-story workplace tower previously owned by Brookfield at 777 S. Figueroa St. is about to be bought on the considerably discounted value of $120 million, or $117 a sq. foot, the Industrial Observer reported. It got here near promoting for about $145 million a number of months in the past however the deal fell aside.
In its assertion to The Instances, the county mentioned it was eyeing the Fuel Firm Tower as an alternative choice to seismically retrofitting its downtown properties. The county owns 33 amenities that engineers say are weak to break down throughout a significant earthquake, together with the Kenneth Hahn Corridor of Administration, which has been the headquarters of Los Angeles County authorities for six many years, residence to the places of work of lots of of workers and the 5 county supervisors.
Final 12 months, the county pledged to improve all 33 weak buildings inside the decade, an formidable endeavor that consultants say would price lots of of tens of millions of {dollars}.
