Starting bid for a Downtown LA office building? $53 psf

How much will an empty, eight-story office building in Downtown Los Angeles cost you? As low as $53 per square foot.  

A 75,000-square-foot building at 737 South Broadway is going up for auction at the end of this month — and the starting bid is $4 million, or roughly $53 per square foot, according to a Ten-X listing. 

The property is pitched as an opportunity for adaptive reuse — “an attractive conversion project for affordable housing,” according to the listing, held by Kidder Mathews. 

The address falls within L.A.’s adaptive reuse incentive area, though experts say office-to-residential conversions are difficult, given the cost and physical limitations. The ordinance allows developers to convert vacant and underutilized buildings into other uses by-right and without any need for formal rezoning applications.

The seller is Broadway Avenue Investments, a limited liability company linked to Alan Gomperts, the CFO of Agron, once an exclusive licensee for Adidas in the U.S., according to L.A. County property records. Gomperts did not respond to a request for comment. 

Gomperts bought the site for an undisclosed amount in 2013, records show. 

Retailer Gap opened a factory store in the 8,500-square-foot retail portion of the building in 2014, but had left by 2021. 

In July last year, Gomperts’ LLC tried to sell the building for $20.5 million, or about $273 per square foot, according to online reports. But a sale never happened. 

Gomperts’ LLC defaulted on a loan tied to the property a month later, a notice of default filed with the county shows. At the time, the LLC owed $17.8 million to the lender, Archway Capital. Archway President Bobby Khorshidi did not respond to a request for comment. 

Archway agreed to modify the loan in April, records show, revising the “terms of the repayment.” 

No reserve price was listed on the Ten-X page, but the seller could have implemented one higher than the $4 million starting bid. 

If the building sells for $53 a square foot, it would mark one of the lowest office trades on a price-per-square-foot basis to occur across Los Angeles. 

At $4 million, however, the sale would not be subject to L.A.’s new transfer tax. If it trades for more than $5 million, it would be subject to a 4 percent tax. 

A day before the transfer tax, known as Measure ULA, went into effect, Joel Schreiber closed on a deal to buy the 40-story Union Bank Plaza in Downtown L.A. for about $158 per square foot. 

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