Westside Mixed-Use Projects Trade for $30M

SANTA MONICA, CA-The Tides Building, a mixed-use office, retail and residential property, has sold for nearly $587 per sf after trading for $18.6 million a year ago, according to locally based Madison Partners. The deal was one of two involving Downtown Santa Monica mixed-use buildings that have sold recently, underscoring what brokers describe as a very tight market for such space in Santa Monica.

The 36,535-sf Tides Building, at 331 Santa Monica Blvd., sold for $21.8 million in a transaction that was brokered by principal Bob Safai of Madison Partners. Donald Passman bought the building from Ten West Associates, which had acquired it a year ago in a deal that was also brokered by Madison Partners. The new buyers financed the acquisition with a conduit loan of $17.5 million that Madison Partners arranged.

Safai calls the building “ideally located,” noting that the sale closed at an in-place capitalization rate of 5%, with retail rents at 50%-60% below market. The three-story concrete and steel structure stands on the corner of Fourth Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, three blocks north of the I-10 Freeway and a block from the city’s Third Street Promenade.