A Los Angeles medical office building near the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is poised for an upgrade roughly four years after its sale to Miami-based developer Crescent Heights.
The 17-story building at 6200 Wilshire Blvd. next to L.A.'s Miracle Mile neighborhood is being eyed for conversion into 200 commercial condominiums, according to city documents.
Crescent Heights — the developer behind the Ten Thousand luxury apartment building that towers 40 stories above Beverly Hills and Century City — bought the 114,000-square-foot building in 2020 for $54.3 million, or $476 per square foot, according to CoStar data. The building, constructed in 1970 and situated near the Academy Museum, Petersen Automotive Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, was less than half occupied at the time of sale. The buyer planned to make upgrades to the building after the purchase.
The 200 planned condominiums will be sold to office users, according to Crescent Heights Partner Elliott Kahn. The buildout is expected to take roughly a year, and will also include a renovation of common areas and building systems a well as a new fitness center and cafe.
"We feel our central location, proximity to hospitals, and the lack of small owner/user medical/office space for sale in a 10-mile radius puts us in a unique position to provide value for buyers and lessees, especially medical practitioners that typically have expensive buildouts and prefer to remain in their locations for longer terms," Kahn said in an email.
The company says it was "first in the nation to introduce condo conversions to multiple American cities." The firm's website details dozens of residential and mixed-use projects in its portfolio across the country, most skewing on the high end, with 38,000 units completed to date, including residential conversions of office space. Its portfolio also features retail, office and other mixed-use projects.
Crescent Heights is active in Los Angeles; it delivered the well-known Ten Thousand project in 2016. Apartment units at the building — which include two- and three-bedroom residences — have an average monthly asking rent of $16,355, according to CoStar data. That's roughly seven times the average monthly asking rent for a Los Angeles apartment.
Meanwhile, Miracle Mile is one of the worst-performing office markets in greater Los Angeles with a whopping 30.2% vacancy rate, nearly double the greater L.A. average of 15.6%, according to CoStar data. No new office space is under construction in the market.
"It was becoming a weaker office market even before the pandemic," said Ryan Patap, senior director of market analytics for CoStar Group in the Los Angeles office.
This story was updated on Jan. 10 with a response from Crescent Heights Partner Elliott Kahn.