Rising Realty Partners and financial partner Lionstone Investments sold the Trust Building on Spring Street in Downtown to UCLA, which plans to use the art deco-style building for satellite classes.

The 340K SF, 11-story building, now renamed UCLA Downtown, reportedly sold for less than $40M, real estate experts with knowledge of the transaction told the Los Angeles Times. That’s a steep discount from both its $88M assessed value and the $80.4M Rising Realty paid for the property in 2016, the LA Times noted.

Office sale prices in the city this year have posted the steepest decline in the nation, falling by 43%, according to Commercial Observer. Last year, buildings averaged $412 per SF; this year through the end of May, they are averaging $237 per SF.

After an extensive $40M renovation, the Trust Building came to market in early 2020, facing a pandemic and lockdowns in its first year of leasing.

At the time of sale, the building had three tenants: Rising Realty, architecture and planning firm KTGY, and the restaurant group of celebrity chef José Andrés, which plans to open a rooftop restaurant at the building later this year.

UCLA has been spending big on real estate to accommodate its student body. Late last year, the school spent $80M to buy Marymount California University’s 24.5-acre Palos Verdes campus and an 11-acre residential site in San Pedro.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block told the LA Times that while the building will host UCLA Extension classes by the end of this year, UCLA has “not precluded” using the site for undergraduate and graduate students.

Students of the new Downtown location will not be the only college students in a historic Downtown building. Arizona State University opened a downtown Los Angeles campus in the Herald Examiner building on 11th Street and Broadway in 2021.

The UCLA chancellor told the LA Times that his school’s investment in Downtown, plus that of ASU, was a “very important statement on the confidence in the future of cities,” and that he hoped “hundreds” of people would eventually occupy UCLA Downtown.