Harbor Closes Distressed Liquidation Sale in 25 Days

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Jun 15, 2017, 08:45 ET

LONG BEACH, Calif., June 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Harbor Associates, LLC ("Harbor") has acquired 10281 W. Pico Blvd., a 33,000 square foot office building located in Century City in a joint venture with Stockbridge Capital Group ("Stockbridge"). Harbor acquired the asset through a distressed liquidation sale and purchased the property in 25 days. This transaction marks the seventh value-add office acquisition for Harbor in the last two years and expands the firm's existing footprint in Southern California. Kevin Shannon and Rob Hannan with NGKF represented the buyer and seller in the transaction.

10281 W. Pico is the 3rd cheapest buy per square foot in West LA over the last 24 months for buildings under 50,000 square feet – a period in which 38 different buildings transacted within the submarket.

Harbor is planning to reposition the asset through a comprehensive rebranding and renovation program that includes transforming the exterior of the building, upgrading lobbies and restrooms, and creating new indoor and outdoor amenity spaces. As part of the repositioning, the project will be renamed as 'Bespoke Century City' and uniquely offers the ability to brand the exterior of the building along with providing a choice of amenities.

Bespoke Century City is well positioned to take advantage of the tremendous supply and demand imbalance for differentiated low-rise creative office buildings as 30-40% of the tenant base works in creative entertainment, media, and production industries but the area is dominated by traditional high-rise offices. The property benefits from a central location along heavily travelled Pico Blvd. close to the premium Century City amenity base and immediately adjacent to the 20^th Century Fox movie & television studios.

The buy for Harbor is the firm's seventh recent acquisition, coming on the heels of Harbor's creative office purchases of 'Create Tustin' & 'Bespoke Tustin' in Tustin, California, '5280 Carroll Canyon' in San Diego, '71 At The Park' in Lake Forest, 'Bespoke Irvine' in Irvine, and 'Think Here' in Thousand Oaks, California.

Paul Miszkowicz, Principal for Harbor, comments, "We acquired Bespoke Century City at a phenomenal basis through a distressed liquidation sale in 25 days and continue to find interesting opportunities in Southern California to invest in the value-add space through our deep network of brokerage relationships and ability to move quickly on compelling opportunities. This won't be the last you hear from Harbor this year - we have a robust pipeline of activity behind this transaction."

Joon Choi, Principal for Harbor, states, "This bespoke building is customizable and offers a high level of finishes with indoor and outdoor amenities in a submarket occupied by some of the world's most innovative and premier companies."

Justin Loiacono, Principal for Harbor, adds, "Bespoke Century City represents our seventh value-add office acquisition in the last two years in Southern California and expands our Los Angeles area portfolio to 3 buildings totaling 192,000 square feet. We are very excited to be making our first acquisition in West LA. We intend on building on our recent momentum by sourcing new opportunities and pursuing similar strategies in high demand Southern California submarkets to meet our acquisition goal of $250M by year end 2017".

About Harbor: Harbor Associates, LLC (www.harborassociates.com) is a value add operating platform focused on acquiring and repositioning under-performing commercial real estate assets throughout Southern California. The three Principals of Harbor have over 30 years of experience in Southern California and have closed over $1.7B in acquisitions and asset managed over $2.5B in assets totaling over 3M SF of office. The company is a joint venture with The Bascom Group, LLC.

About Stockbridge: Stockbridge Capital Group (www.stockbridge.com) is real estate investment management firm headquartered in San Francisco, California with offices in New York, Chicago and Atlanta. The firm's portfolio is comprised of assets across the risk spectrum, spanning all major property types throughout the United States. As of March 31, 2017, the firm's total Assets Under Management was $11.0 billion.