Vantage Property pays $68M for West LA redevelopment site: sources

The firm is behind other office projects, including the Facebook-leased Playa Jefferson

Chairman & CEO Edward (Ned) D. Fox and the property
Chairman & CEO Edward (Ned) D. Fox and the property

Vantage Property Investors acquired a three-building property for $67.5 million that was marketed as a redevelopment opportunity, The Real Deal has learned. Sources familiar with the deal say it hasn’t closed yet.

Collectively known as the Sawtelle Olympic campus, the properties are located at 2222 Corinth Avenue, 2255 Sawtelle Boulevard and 11340 W. Olympic Boulevard.

The seller is Oakwood Worldwide, an extended-stay housing company founded by Howard Ruby. He sold the company to Singapore-based Mapletree Investments about a year ago for an undisclosed sum.

Oakwood Worldwide, acting through an LLC, has owned the three buildings for more than a decade, property records show. In August 2007, it secured a $29 million loan to refinance the property, according to Real Capital Analytics.

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Marketing materials label the campus an “underdeveloped” property with an opportunity to reposition or redevelop. The properties are a few blocks away from the Metrolink Station and Sepulveda Expo Line, within the Olympic Corridor submarket.

Tom Bohlinger at JLL had the listing.

Neither Vantage nor Oakwood Worldwide could be reached for comment. Bohlinger declined to comment.

Real estate investment firm Vantage, led by chairman Ned Fox, was behind Playa Jefferson, a five-building creative office campus that’s home to Facebook. The company sold the 250,000-square-foot site to Rockwood Capital in July 2016 for a reported $165 million.

The Manhattan Beach-based firm focuses on finding value-add opportunities for the “creative office market,” according to its website. It has also developed office projects in San Francisco’s South of Market district.