The popular Benihana Restaurant and property at 38 N La Cienega Blvd in Beverly Hills has sold to GK Development for $20.5M.

The seller, George Shoji, and his family had owned the property for about 30 years, according to CBRE SVP Joel Frank, who repped the seller with CBRE's Alex Bergeson. GK Development is a longtime, multi-generational Beverly Hills developer family, according to Joel.

Bisnow caught up with Joel to find out more about the deal.

Benihana is closing stores, and “after a long back-and-forth, they decided to close this one,” Joel says.

The restaurant shut its doors last September. The deal closed March 22 on the 21,996 SF property, he says.

The hibachi restaurant, which had autographed photos of its celebrity patrons on the walls, was a Beverly Hills institution.

A spokesperson for GK Development says there are no plans yet for the property.

Joel (above) says the company would like to hold the property in the near term and ultimately develop a project that will work well with the character of east Beverly Hills and the adjacent La Cienega train station.

The train station, currently under construction, “is going to be a great demand-driver for this site and that development,” Joel tells us. The developer may wait until the train station is further along before developing the property.

Cushman & Wakefield executive director of retail services Leslie J. Mayer, who focuses on specialty retail and restaurants, says the sale is significant because the Benihana Restaurant was “one of the last remaining single-tenant restaurant parcels on Restaurant Row with extensive surface parking."

The location is prime for a possible mixed-use development, especially since the land values are such that a restaurant would be hard-pressed to achieve the sustainable sale volumes to justify the luxury of having the property all to itself, according to Leslie.

Most likely the property will become a "future mixed-use development" with restaurant and retail on the ground level with residential, creative office or live/work spaces above with subterranean parking, she says.

There are other Benihana Restaurants in LA, including Encino, Santa Monica and Torrance, but no other locations are owned by the Shoji family.