Solar company buys former Grammy building in SaMo from HPP for $35M

Solar company Cypress Creek Renewables has purchased the former Grammy building at 3402 Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica from Hudson Pacific Properties for $35 million, The Real Deal has learned.

The company, led by CEO Matthew McGovern, paid $685 a square foot for the vacant 51,100-square-foot office building, which will serve as its headquarters starting at the end of the year, according to Jeff McKay, a company spokesperson. Cypress will vacate its current headquarters at 3250 Ocean Park Boulevard.

The solar farm provider, which has eight offices nationwide, had grown too large for its space, McKay said. Cypress chose to buy a building, rather than lease, so it could customize the space “to reflect [its] commitment towards renewable energy,” he said.

Hudson Pacific Properties acquired the building for $18.5 million in 2014 from Trammell Crow Company, which once had plans to develop the site into a 260-unit residential complex. The housing developer had purchased it from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for $10.5 million in 2011. The building has been vacant since the organization, which hands out the Grammys, relocated its headquarters to the Lantana campus in Santa Monica in 2009.

Hudson Pacific will use the proceeds of the sale toward its pending acquisition of Hollywood Center Studios, which The Real Deal first reported earlier this year. That sale is expected to close May 1, according to company filings.

Hudson is planning to build an additional 575,000-square-foot property on the studio site, which was once owned by Francis Ford Coppola.