LA Biz Observed: Maguire in $3 billion office deal

Maguire in $3 billion office deal

Mark Lacter • Bio • Email

It's one of the biggest L.A. real estate deals ever. The NY investment firm Blackstone Group is selling 23 Socal properties to Maguire Properties, including the 52-story Two California Plaza downtown. Maguire is already downtown L.A.'s biggest landlord (it owns the 72-story U.S. Bank Tower and the 42-story One California Plaza), but the Blackstone deal also includes a bunch of OC properties (Tower 17 in Irvine and Stadium Towers Plaza in Anaheim). The sale appears to be a further debt-reducing effort by Blackstone after its $39 billion buyout of Equity Office Properties Trust, a Chicago real estate investment trust. Blackstone has been selling off other blocks of property. What all this means for office tenants is the likelihood that rents will be going up. Socal's office market has been on fire over the last year or so, thanks to low vacancy rates and little new construction. Bloomberg News appears to have broken the story on Saturday; LAT has additional info this morning. Nothing has been formally announced.

6:45 AM Monday, February 19 2007 • Link
Email or share:

8:33 PM Fri | Eli Broad offers $30 million to save MOCA

4:10 PM Fri | Villaraigosa wants 'emergency' cuts

3:57 PM Fri | Crest Theatre put up for sale

3:38 PM Fri | Reading 'The Maltese Falcon'

12:58 PM Fri | NYT's White House team

Two words: Retail liquidators

4:49 PM Fri | Forget plastics, the real action these days is arranging going-out-of-business sales.

Rags to riches to rags

4:10 PM Fri | Louis Verdad was one of L.A.'s hottest designers, but he had little idea of how to run a business.

Going through 'The Changes'

TJ Sullivan | Without referencing its recent layoff, the Ventura County Star's editor says the suburban LA paper is now "more streamlined and, in many ways, much more efficient."

Lost thunder: BLM preparing to execute 30,000 wild horses

Deanne Stillman | We stripped the Indians of their ponies, and now we're doing it to ourselves.

LA's fire-orange sun

TJ Sullivan | When the sun looks like that, there's a big fire somewhere regardless of whether we see or smell smoke.

Contributors • RSS feed

Innovation chief Abrams not too impressed with Times

Lee Abrams, Tribune Company's chief innovation officer, doesn’t seem too impressed with the Los Angeles Times. That’s the feeling I got when he appeared at the Los Angeles Press Club.