Swedish luxury developer Oscar Engelbert planted another flag in Los Angeles as his once mighty Scandinavian business, Oscar Properties, founders in debt, The Real Deal has learned.
Engelbert teamed up with fashion entrepreneur Jens Grede to buy the office building at 331 North Maple Drive in Beverly Hills from DivcoWest for $61 million, or $680 per square foot, according to property records and sources with knowledge of the deal.
Grede — a co-founder with his wife, Emma Grede, and Kim Kardashian of shapewear brand Skims — and Engelbert each took a 50 percent stake in the landmarked property, once owned and occupied by David Geffen’s DreamWorks Records. Neither Swede responded to requests for comment.
But there’s a twist.
The granite and limestone edifice became vacant sometime after DivcoWest bought it in 2018 for $82.2 million.
Now it will become home to Frame, the pricey denim brand Jens Grede founded with Erik Torstensson in 2012.
Frame, which is currently headquartered in Culver City, quietly signed a lease for the entire three-story building in May, months before the sale to Engelbert and Grede closed, property records show.
Terms of the 89,642-square-foot lease are unclear. JLL’s Jaclyn Ward and Peter Hajimihalis, who had the listing, did not respond to requests for comment.
The situation could inspire a case of déjà vu as the two Swedes have shown up together before.
Engelbert and Grede became allies last June, when Engelbert’s Stockholm-based Parkgate – a shareholder in Oscar Properties – paid $37 million for a 51 percent stake in Jerry Snyder’s 1601 Vine Street in Hollywood, just weeks before Skims leased 116,000 square feet across seven floors of the eight-story office building.
The former WeWork location had been mostly vacant since the coworking giant shut down its Hollywood outpost in 2022.
Now Engelbert and Grede are pulling off a similar feat in Beverly Hills as they roll out the red carpet for Frame — each time buying an office building and securing a fashion-industry tenant with Grede as an insider.
For the Beverly Hills deal, having a tenant locked in helped Engelbert score a $75.2 million loan from Deutsche Bank, property records show. The surplus cash from the purchase price will help pay for tenant improvements promised in Frame’s lease, according to one of the sources with knowledge of the deal.
That puts the new landlords a step ahead of DivcoWest, which paid a 26 percent premium for the building between West Third Street and Alden Drive six years ago, compared to its most recent price. When Divco bought it, the building was 60 percent leased.
DivcoWest, the equity arm of investment manager Divcore, was in the trenches with its lender, Deutsche Bank, and hoping for a loan workout when Engelbert and Grede arrived on the scene, according to one of the sources.
A spokesperson for DivcoWest did not respond to TRD’s request for comment and a spokesperson for Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Newmark’s Kevin Shannon brokered the sale and declined to comment.