Apple taking another bite out of Culver City
Apple has agreed to lease the entirety of Lincoln Property Company’s 128,000-square-foot building at 8777 Washington Boulevard in Culver City, The Real Deal has learned. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
HBO was set to be the sole tenant leasing at the site, but those plans fell through.
Located on the corner of Washington and National boulevards just seven miles east of the Santa Monica Pier, the four-story complex will include office space as well as 4,500 square feet of ground-level retail. The project, which will replace the former Surfas Culinary District cooking supplies facility, is being led by a partnership between New York-based Clarion Partners and Lincoln Property, of Texas.
TRD previously reported that Apple was in talks to lease Hackman Capital Partners’ 85,000-square-foot campus at 5500 Jefferson Boulevard near Culver City. Sources familiar with the deal now say Apple will be taking over the space.
Combined, that amounts to some 213,000 square feet of office space in the neighborhood. Hackman also developed the headquarters of Beats by Dre — an Apple subsidiary — at 8600 Hayden Place in Culver City.
Trump policy could hurt LA housing market
The Trump administration’s decision to end a special status for citizens of El Salvador could have a significant impact on L.A.’s housing market, experts said.
On Jan. 8, the administration ended the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Salvadorans, a move that will require over 200,000 citizens of that country who have been living in the U.S. to leave by September 2019. That includes roughly 30,000 people living in L.A., according to a 2017 study by the Center for Migration Studies.
Many, particularly those in Pico-Union and its surrounding areas, live in rent-stabilized apartments. Generally, only L.A. buildings built before October 1978 have limits on how much rents can be raised. But when a rent-stabilized tenant voluntarily leaves, landlords can sometimes charge a new tenant market-rate rent. The displacement that ending TPS would cause could put a serious dent in the area’s rent-stabilized stock, according to Paavo Monkkonen, a professor of urban planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.
“It would be terrible for the neighborhoods where they are working and living,” Monkkonen said. “If people are forced out, landlords would raise the rent to the next tenant, and it would be bad for affordability.”
Local developer pleads guilty to money laundering charges
Downtown Los Angeles developer Morad “Ben” Neman pleaded guilty to federal charges while his Fashion District textile company admitted to laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars in purported drug money, authorities said on Dec. 22.
Neman, 57, owner of Neman Real Estate Investments, and his brother Hersel, 58, face up to 21 and 28 years in federal prison on tax fraud and money laundering charges, respectively. The two were using their textile company, Pacific Eurotex Corporation, to launder $370,000 from an undercover agent posing as a cash courier in 2013, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Ben Neman was busted shortly after shelling out $22 million in May 2014 to acquire the Downtown Car Wash at 811 West Olympic Boulevard, across from L.A. Live, with hopes of building a mixed-use high-rise featuring a hotel and long-term residential units, city filings records show.
In total, Neman Real Estate owns six commercial properties in L.A. with an estimated value of $81 million, according to RCA. In February, Ben listed his Wallace Neff-designed residence at 805 North Linden Drive in Beverly Hills for nearly $15 million. As of late December, he remained the owner of record of the 5,700-square-foot home.