Harkham family buys Westlake Village creative office

The Harkham family has spent more of the cash they took in on the recent $200 million sale of their shuttered Rodeo Drive hotel.

Investor Efram Harkham and his family bought a 132,037-square-foot creative office property at 2625 Townsgate Road in Westlake Village for $35 million, according to JLL, which brokered the deal and arranged financing. The deal comes out to around $265 per square foot.

To purchase the property, the Harkhams scored a $21 million, 10-year, fixed-rate loan, JLL said. The brokerage declined to name the lender, but property records show the loan came from First Republic Bank.

A limited liability company linked to Santa Barbara-based Lineage Family Office sold the property, according to public property records filed with Ventura County.

The family isn’t planning to do anything major to the property in Westlake Village, a suburban market on the boundary of L.A. and Ventura counties. The building was last renovated in 2001.

About 24,000 square feet of the property is currently available for lease, according to LoopNet. Asking rents at the property are currently $34.20 per square foot per year, or $2.85 monthly per square foot. Average rents for office space across Los Angeles in the first quarter were $3.85 per month per square foot in the first quarter, though suburban asking rent averages were less.

The Harkhams funded some of the purchase using proceeds from the exchange of the Rodeo Drive sale. In December, Efram Harkham sold the 86-key hotel, which shuttered during the pandemic, to LVMH.

Since the sale, the family has pivoted to multifamily and office buildings, buying up properties in Los Angeles and on the opposite coast.

In L.A., the family recently bought two mixed-use properties totaling 41,000 square feet in Highland Park for $28.7 million. Across the country in New York, the Harkhams spent $26.6 million to buy a 127-unit residential building — a property the family plans to renovate.