The sky is the limit for a 2.3-acre open patch of the downtown Los Angeles entertainment district. That is provided someone buys the billing behind the $100 million listing that just hit the market, The Real Deal has learned.
The sky-high price speaks for itself: the biggest ask for land in the city’s center in recent years at around $43 million an acre.
The scale of the opportunity is outlined by Douglas Elliman’s Bassick Real Estate Advisors division, with Catherine Bassick holding the private listing. Sales materials reviewed by The Real Deal plug the site as entitled to accommodate a “skyline-defining landmark.”
The land owned by nonprofit Salvation Army spans 832 and 900 James M. Wood Boulevard and 916 and 927 Francisco Street, plus an additional commercial parcel nearby. (9th Street is known as James M. Wood Boulevard for a stretch from the Westlake District to downtown).
Sales materials refer to it as a mixed-use development opportunity, and claims it is “one of the last large-scale assemblages in DTLA’s core.”
There is no height limit, according to the brochure, which lists 1.3 million square feet of developable land. The space is about a block away from LA Live, two Marriott-branded hotels and the Grammy Museum, with the Los Angeles Convention Center several blocks further south.
832 James M. Wood Boulevard was the Salvation Army Zahn Memorial Center, an emergency shelter for families. The parcels that make up the site create three connecting plots owned by Salvation Army, which has a campus in Long Beach now.
The material includes development scenarios such as a mixed-use residential tower with a retail space at the ground level and rooftop amenities, or a hotel or a creative campus for corporate headquarters.
Downtown offices still have an about 33 percent vacancy rate despite the recent return to work. A lot of employers are choosing places such as Century City — which is considered more desirable because the offices are newer, full of amenities and homelessness isn’t much of an issue, to entice their workers back to their desks. Apartments are better off, but still have a higher vacancy rate downtown than all of Los Angeles. Hotels are seeing challenges due to a difficult economic and regulatory environment, but the World Cup and Olympics are coming soon.
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