Hines buys LA trophy office building

Hines has bought the Los Angeles Citigroup Center from private equity real estate firm Broadway Partners for an undisclosed sum.

The Houston-based real estate investment firm acquired the office property, which was the backdrop to the popular 1980s US television show, LA Law, through its US Office Value Added Fund II. The fund closed on $828 million in August last year.

The 48-story trophy building, located in Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill area, was bought from Broadway Partners, who purchased the property in December 2006. Broadway founder and chief executive officer Scott Lawlor said in a statement the firm was going through an “asset disposition program” owing to the credit crunch. He said the firm was facing one of the “most challenging investment market[s] seen in many decades,” adding that the firm was attempting to “unlock and harvest the value of properties in our portfolio.”  

Broadway last month sold an office building at 200 State Street in Boston to German fund manager GLL Real Estate Partners after buying the property just 15 months previously. On the firm’s website, it describes the building as “one of Boston’s premier and most recognizable office properties.”

Hines senior vice president and HVAF II fund manager, Dave Congdon, said the Citigroup Center was at the “nexus of LA’s government, legal and financial communities.”

It follows the sale of Hines’ minority interests in Boston’s Back Bay trophy buildings, 222 Berkeley and 500 Boylston, to The Blackstone Group’s Equity Office Properties. Hines will remain as property manager. The buildings were developed by Hines in partnership with EOP and were portrayed in the US law television show, Boston Legal.