Health supplements giant Herbalife has acquired its Torrance headquarters for $29.6 million or $159 per square foot, 10 years after first inking a deal to lease the building, The Real Deal has learned.
The company bought the building from its landlord, SteelWave, an investment firm which bought the building in the mid-1990s under its old name, Legacy Partners.
Frank Scott and Mike McRoskey of JLL were involved in brokering the transaction. McRoskey declined to comment, while representatives for both Herbalife and SteelWave were unavailable.
Herbalife, perhaps best known for assaults lobbed at it by investment mogul Bill Ackman, who has claimed the company is running a pyramid scheme, first moved its Americas headquarters to the building, at 950 West 190th Street, in 2006, bringing 600 employees to the 186,000-square-foot property.
Herbalife’s lease came with a right of first refusal to buy the building, which was built in 1980.
The Torrance office market is on the upward track, according to recent figures. Office space in the neighborhood was 24.1 percent vacant in the fourth quarter, according to data from JLL, down from 25.3 percent in the third. The average asking rent was $2.55, compared to $2.26 in the same period a year earlier.