Local Investor Buys Pasadena Chamber of Commerce Building

The historic Chamber of Commerce office building in Pasadena has been purchased by a locally based investor.

Pasadena-based investor Pete Kutzer and his company Edgewood Realty Partners bought the Chamber of Commerce Building at 117 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, L.A. Business First reported. The five-story, 82,000-square-foot building, which sold alongside its adjacent parking garage, is 84 percent leased. It also has more than 16,000 square feet of ground-floor retail along Colorado Boulevard.

The sale price for the 1904-built property was not disclosed. The figure is estimated to be between $330 and $340 per square foot, Bisnow reported. That would place the total purchase price at more than $27 million.

The seller in the transaction was not disclosed. Newmark’s Kevin Shannon, Rob Hannan, Ken White, Laura Stumm and Michael Moll represented the seller in the transaction. The Chamber Building “attracted strong investor interest largely due to its stable profile as being at least 90 percent leased over the last 10 years,” Shannon said in a statement, per L.A. Business First.

Other office buildings in Pasadena have either traded hands or seen their value plummet since the summer.

In August, Harbor Associates and The Roxborough Group paid $120 million for the Pasadena Towers, comprising 477,101 square feet of offices across two towers at 55 South Lake Avenue. The deal works out to about $252 per square foot. CBRE Investment Management acquired that property in 2016 for $256 million, or about $537 per square foot.

The month before, the nine-story Pasadena Office Tower at 150 South Robles Avenue was reappraised at $23 million, representing a 59 percent decrease from its $57 million valuation a decade prior. Occupancy at the Pasadena Office Tower from its last appraisal to last year fell to 69 percent from 93 percent.

— Chris Malone Méndez