Blox Picks Up Office Building in Emeryville for $62 PSF

Blox Ventures has bagged a 109,300-square-foot office building in Emeryville for $6.8 million.

An affiliate of the San Francisco-based investor acquired the eight-story office building through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure at 6001 Shellmound Street, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

The seller was a group led by Colorado-based Sagard Real Estate, formerly Everwest Real Estate Investors.

The deal works out to $62 per square foot — 79.5 percent less than its last traded price.

EverWest bought the property in 2017 for $33 million, or $302 per square foot, taking out a $21.61 million loan that matured in December.

In January, Blox Ventures put itself in position to acquire the property by paying $6.8 million to buy the loan from PNC. With the purchase, Blox became the lender and completed the foreclosure, according to the Mercury News.

The $6.8 million Blox paid to buy the loan is 81.7 percent below the most recently available assessed value for the building, according to the newspaper.

The Class A office building, built in 1988 next to the Public Market Emeryville food court, is 60 percent occupied. It was revamped in 2017, according to LoopNet.

Blox sees plenty of potential in the Emeryville market.

“Emeryville is a leading innovation hub in the Bay Area,” Jason Oberman, CEO of Blox Ventures, said at the time the Blox affiliate bought the loan for the building.

“With global leaders like Pixar Animation Studios, Bayer and Novartis, along with the area’s expanding residential offerings, the long-term potential of this property is very promising.”

The deal joins other East Bay office properties selling for a fraction of what they were once worth following a pandemic shift to remote work, resulting in high vacancy. With higher interest rates and refinancing costs, many landlords have struggled to keep their buildings.

This fall, Lakeside Group and Rubicon Point Partners acquired a 15-story, 279,700-square-foot building and parking garage at 180 Grand Avenue, near Downtown Oakland, through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, after buying its loan for $30.2 million, or $108 per square foot.

Blox Ventures, founded by Oberman in 2015, owns more than 6 million square feet of commercial real estate valued at more than $3 billion across the Bay Area and in Salt Lake City, Utah, according to its website and the San Francisco Business Times.

In 2018, Blox and New York-basedAngelo Gordon bought a 58,000-square-foot commercial complex of offices, shops and a long-vacant supermarket in Palo Alto for $78.3 million. They leased out the market space and flipped it two years later for $103.6 million, 32 percent more than its last traded price.— Dana Bartholomew