Chris Rising and his Rising Realty Partners belong in the same sentence as Brookfield when it comes to Downtown Los Angeles these days — but not in a colossus-astride-the-commercial property market sort of way.
Rising and partner DigitalBridge joined Brookfield on the list of landlords with properties in receivership last week, when a judge made the call on the 1 million-square-foot, 42-story One California Plaza on Bunker Hill. Lenders’ request for a receiver led to Triguild taking on the role in the wake of a $300 million commercial mortgage-backed securities debt default and foreclosure.
Rising Realty and DigitalBridge (previously called Colony Capital and earlier Colony Northstar) purchased the office tower at 300 South Grand Avenue for $465 million eight years ago. It is now valued at $121 million.
The steep drop has come against a backdrop of Downtown L.A.’s office sector muddling along around a 33 percent vacancy rate. Powerhouses such as Brookfield have been handing keys back to lenders on multiple Class A offices over the past year or so, and more recently the company saw the receiver sale of EY Plaza fall through.
Rexford as takeover target?
Commercial real estate doesn’t get much closer to plain vanilla than a big, long-established industrial REIT.
Until famed activist investor Elliott Investment Management starts looking under the hood.
That appears to be the case for Rexford Industrial Realty, the $10 billion specialist in Southern California infill development of warehouses and logistics hubs.
Elliott Investment Management has reportedly built an active stake in Los Angeles-based Rexford, which should not come as a surprise. Deutsche Bank earlier this year predicted someone may make a bid for Rexford’s portfolio because the Southern California market could present an opportunity for private and public investors looking to expand their reach.
Rexford recently reported around $113 million in net income in the second quarter of the year, an about 42 percent increase compared to a year earlier. Co-Chief Executives Micheal Frankel and Howard Schwimmer credited what they called “the resiliency of our business model in today’s dynamic market environment.”
Not every move Elliott makes is “activist” — or hostile, for that matter.
No comment on either side on this one … yet
Malibu default
It looks as though this developer jumped through the hoops but was working without a net.
Norman Haynie won the approval of the Malibu City Council for a new 39-room boutique hotel on Pacific Coast Highway, and got the famously picky California Coastal Commission’s okay, too.
And then he defaulted on a $16 million construction loan to develop his proposed Sea View Hotel at 22741 Pacific Coast Highway, records reveal.
The more than 1 acre site is not far from the Malibu Pier, and while it wasn’t affected by the wildfire earlier this year, it probably hasn’t helped the overall development plan to be located in a city where more than 700 homes were destroyed.
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