Lincoln to buy 915 Wilshire back from Brickman for just under $130M

Kevin Shannon 915 Wilshire
Kevin Shannon and the office building at 915 Wilshire Boulevard

Nine years after Dallas-based Lincoln Property Company sold a Downtown Los Angeles office building to New York’s Brickman Associates, the firm is buying the property back — for $13 million more.

Lincoln and joint venture partner Rockwood Capital are in contract to buy the 390,312-square-foot Class A office building at 915 Wilshire Boulevard for just under $130 million, or $333 a square foot, The Real Deal has exclusively learned. The sale is expected to close by the end of the week.

The building was last updated by Lincoln in 2003. Its Southern California headquarters is located in the building. Lincoln will spend at least $6 million giving it a creative office makeover and increasing rents, sources said.

Lincoln originally purchased the property in 2003 for $49.2 million, or $128 a square foot, from TIAA-CREF. In 2007, Lincoln sold it to Brickman for $117 million, or just under $300 a square foot. Lincoln stayed on as property manager, and also leased the property for almost ten years.

Its re-acquisition of the building comes after it has disposed of several of its buildings at a profit. Earlier this year, it sold Runway Playa Vista to Invesco for $475 million; it sold the Desmond to AEG for $48.5 million;and it sold Hollywood Media Campus to Clarion Partners for $61.3 million.

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The building at 915 Wilshire is 80 percent leased by 32 tenants that include the Army Corps of Engineers, Aecom and Regency Centers, according to CoStar Group.

Kevin Shannon and his team represented both the buyers and seller in the in-contracts deal. This will be the third time he has brokered the sale of the building.

Shannon, now with NGKF, could not be reached for comment.

Aaron Lazovik, a vice president at Brickman who heads up West Coast acquisitions, said the time was right to sell the building to capitalize on the momentum building in Downtown Los Angeles as Korean Air’s Wilshire Grand tower nears completion.

Several big Downtown office landlords are selling for similar reasons, Lazovik said, mentioning that One California Plaza and the building at 600 South Broadway are on the market.
The roughly $333-per-square-foot price Lincoln and Rockwood will pay is on par with recent sales in the area. Rising Realty bought the One Bunker Hill building at 601 West 5th Street for $337 a square foot in October 2015. Lincoln sold 800 Wilshire Boulevard to Vancouver’s Onni Group for $360 a square foot in November.