San Diego Office Property Gets New Owner After 60 Years

By Evelyn Jozsa

1420 Kettner Blvd., San Diego

Kennedy Wilson negotiated a two-part sale of the ground lease and underlying fee interest in land for a property in the Little Italy submarket of San Diego. Ocean West Capital Partners in partnership with DivcoWest acquired the 123,000-square-foot, seven-story office building and is under contract to purchase the land in the off-market deal. This is DivcoWest’s second purchase of an office building in San Diego this month.

Fred Cordova, executive vice president of brokerage at Kennedy Wilson, worked on behalf of the seller of the leasehold interest in the property and the buyer of the fee interest in the land.

The property is located at 1420 Kettner Blvd. and occupies 2.6 acres of land just a few blocks from North San Diego Bay.  Tenants benefit from easy access to the local metro station, ocean views, several outdoor balconies and a seven-story central atrium.

Multi-million dollar renovation

This is the first time the property changed ownership since the 1950s when it was originally purchased by a private financial institution.

“Layered transactions with multiple constituents are rare in modern real estate and require a sophisticated, thoughtful approach. Kennedy Wilson packaged both the building and land, and delivered it to a qualified buyer in an off-market transaction, a complex strategy that was many months in the making,” Cordova said in a prepared statement.

Ocean West and DivcoWest are planning a multi-million dollar modernization of the property. “The sellers wanted to downsize and relocate their operations to a smaller, more efficient space,” added Cordova. “The buyer saw this property as a great creative office re-positioning opportunity in the growing San Diego sub-market of Little Italy, and we were able to accomplish this.”

Ryan Tucker, director at Ocean West Capital Partners, explained that the building will be transformed into a progressive office campus fit for tenants seeking an active work environment.

Image courtesy of Barrett Ross Creative