Family investment group buys Chase Plaza for $50M

Chase Plaza at 888 West 6th Street (Credit: Somerset Group)
Chase Plaza at 888 West 6th Street (Credit: Somerset Group)

The 15-story Chase Plaza building in Bunker Hill changed hands Thursday for $50 million, or about $540 per square foot — the highest price per square foot paid for a Downtown office building in the last 10 years, according to the broker on the deal.

The buyer was an Los Angeles family investment group headed by Macy Lai, the L.A. Times reported. The seller was a partnership led by the New York City-based Somerset Group.

The property, at 888 West 6th Street, spans just 105,000 square feet, making it significantly smaller than the neighboring 50- and 60-story structures. But it was its smaller size that attracted bidders, CBRE broker Phillip Sample told the Times.

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Sample represented both the seller and the buyer. Lai said the family plans to hold on to the property as a long-term investment.

The deal serves as further evidence that DTLA’s commercial market is seeing a resurgence, Sample said. The submarket had a vacancy rate of 16.9 percent and average rent of $3.27 per square foot in the second quarter of 2016 — a slow but steady improvement over the same period last year, according to a CBRE report. [LAT]Cathaleen Chen