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The talent agency that usually sells its actors and other talent today sold its landmark headquarters in Beverly Hills.
William Morris Agency sold three buildings to a partnership of Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. and Cape Horn Group of Chile.
The William Morris Agency opened its first Los Angeles office in 1927 in the State Theatre Building, eight miles away from the city’s downtown Broadway theatre district.
Today, the Agency is located at William Morris Plaza on El Camino Drive. In 1998, the street was re-named William Morris Place by the City of Beverly Hills on the occasion of William Morris’ 100th Anniversary.
An investment group led by South American investors paid $143 million for the Beverly Hills talent agency building.
William Morris Agency, the century-old talent firm that has represented generations of actors, has bucked a tough real estate market and sold its Beverly Hills Talent Agency building (not the agency) complex for $143 million to a consortium led by South American investors.
The price amounted to $783 a foot, about twice the average price of an upscale Los Angeles office building. But the buyers, a partnership consisting of Cape Horn Group of Chile and Lincoln Property Co. in Dallas, aren’t complaining.
“We are extremely happy with the properties,” Eduardo Covarrubias, a co-founder of Cape Horn Group, said in a phone call from Chile.
…”They give us ideal protection from inflation at a time when there is turmoil in the financial sectors,” Covarrubias said.
…William Morris said Friday that it would stay at its current site as a tenant until 2010, when it expects to move into an environmentally friendly building under construction on nearby North Beverly Drive.
The three-building complex, dating to the early 1950s, holds down a prestigious corner near the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive and hasn’t been on the market before. So it drew strong interest from investors even though financing for real estate deals has nearly dried up in recent months because of the global credit crunch, said David Binswanger, who heads Lincoln Property’s L.A. office.
With sales of properties that cost $50 million or more growing rare in the last six months, “there is no way to dispute that this [sale] is an anomaly today,” said Marc Renard of Cushman & Wakefield, one of the brokers who represented William Morris in the sale.
The talent agency has owned and occupied most of the 182,000-plus square feet of space in the buildings for decades, Chairman Jim Wiatt said, but it’s time to go.
The building being developed for them by George Comfort & Sons Inc. will include a private movie theater, seating as many as 200 people, and restaurants on the ground floor.
The acquisition is the first in Southern California for Cape Horn, which also owns about 1 million square feet in Chicago and Miami.