Los Angeles County agrees to buy downtown skyscraper
Roger Vincent, Rebecca Ellis
Los Angeles Times
August 1, 2024
Los Angeles County has agreed to buy the Gas Company Tower, center, one of the most prominent office skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles, for $215 million in a foreclosure sale. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The county of Los Angeles has tentatively agreed to buy the Gas Company Tower, a prominent office skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles, for $215 million in a foreclosure sale.
The price is a deep discount from its appraised value of $632 million in 2020, underscoring how much downtown office values have fallen in recent years.
The Board of Supervisors must still approve the deal, which county real estate officials quietly but aggressively negotiated. If completed, the purchase could move workers and public services out of existing county offices, including the well-known Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, which dates to 1960, according to multiple people familiar with the transaction who requested they not be named in order to discuss the confidential negotiations.
The county has begun the due diligence process of examining the property for possible structural problems or other issues before finalizing the transaction, which could take two to three months to complete, the sources said.
In a statement to The Times, the county said that it had submitted a nonbinding “letter of interest” for the tower.
“Because we are seeing once-in-a-generation price reductions for commercial real estate in the downtown area, as responsible stewards of public funds, the County is doing its due diligence and evaluating the possibility of acquiring property in the Civic Center area, such as the Gas Company Tower,” the statement said.
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