DivcoWest Lands $145M Refi for LA Tower

655 N. Central Ave.

DivcoWest has closed a $145 million refinancing deal for Glendale Plaza, a 24-story office tower in Glendale, Calif., according to ReBusiness Online. CBRE helped negotiate the five-year, floating-rate note on behalf of the borrower. The financing will retire a $120 million loan that AXA Equitable Life Insurance Co. provided in 2017, CommercialEdge data shows.

DivcoWest acquired the 591,958-square-foot asset from PGIM Real Estate in 2017. The company paid $179 million for the 1999-built tower and has invested more than $17 million in renovations. Building upgrades included the addition of an outdoor event space, gym and conference center. The property offers 23,000-square-foot floorplates and a parking ratio of 3 spaces per 1,000 square feet. Last year, the property received LEED Gold recertification.

Located in the Vineyard neighborhood at 655 N. Central Ave., just off Ventura Freeway, Glendale Plaza is 2 miles from Griffith Park and some 10 miles north of downtown Los Angeles.

Glendale Plaza is currently 77 percent leased to a tenant roster that includes DreamWorks Animation Television, flex workspace provider Regus, ATC Trading Corp., UNUM, a life insurance company and law firm Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie, among others.

The CBRE Debt & Structured Finance team included Executive Vice President Brad Zampa and Senior Vice Presidents Michael Walker and Greg Grant.

Active on all fronts

DivcoWest has started the year with a series of investments in residential properties and redevelopment sites. Last month, the company also inked a lease with Meta—former Facebook—for 33 floors in Sixth and Guadalupe, an upcoming 66-story skyscraper that DivcoWest is developing in Austin in partnership with Lincoln Property Co. and Karioi Residential, the Austin Business Journal reported.

The transactions follow a fairly active 2021 for the company. In September of last year, DivcoWest expanded its Los Angeles footprint to nearly 1 million square feet with the acquisition of Lankershim Plaza, a 180,000-square-foot building in North Hollywood’s Arts District. The company paid $92 million to J.H. Snyder Co. for the asset. Glandale Plaza is still the largest office property DivcoWest owns in Southern California, according to CommercialEdge data.

A few months later, DivcoWest closed a major refinancing deal for two of its life science and office buildings in Boston. In November, the company received $1.23 billion to refinance 350 Water St. and 450 Water St. in Cambridge, Mass. A team of investors including Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and 3650 REIT provided the 15-year CMBS loan, according to the Commercial Observer.