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New investors are on board at an in-progress project to transform a low-rise Mid-Wilshire office into a residential mixed-use building.
CIM Group owns the property, which is part of a larger complex known as the Farmers Insurance headquarters. CIM tried to sell the office building in 2019, The Real Deal reported at the time. It filed plans in 2021 to convert the building for mixed residential and office uses. Work began on that plan earlier this year, and new investors have signed on to the project, CIM affiliate CMCT announced Tuesday.
Japan-based Kanden Realty and Taisei Corp., plus an undisclosed "international institutional investor," are now co-investors in the project, according to CMCT.
The top two floors of the three-story office building at 4750 Wilshire Blvd. will become 68 market-rate apartments.
Those units will be "oversized" and feature space for a home office, plus a communal coworking area, lounge, pool and gym. The building already has an underground parking garage and will have dedicated access for residents.
The ground-floor office space at 4750 Wilshire, which measures about 30K SF, is fully leased and will remain offices.
"The investment by these significant institutional investors marks an expansion of CMCT’s asset-light approach, making property-level equity investments alongside co-investors," a release says.
Since the rise of hybrid and remote work arrangements, office-to-residential conversions have been put forth as a potential solution for empty or underused offices. Experts across the country have said that while this is possible for some spaces, the majority will likely be too challenging or expensive to make this a widely adopted solution. There are a handful of examples of recent office-to-residential conversions in Los Angeles, especially in Koreatown.
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