Iconic Calabasas office sells at a record price


CHANGING HANDS—The former ValleyCrest Landscape office building in Calabasas recently sold at a record price. The new owner plans to adapt the facility for leasing to multiple tenants. Courtesy Photo

CHANGING HANDS—The former ValleyCrest Landscape office building in Calabasas recently sold at a record price. The new owner plans to adapt the facility for leasing to multiple tenants. Courtesy Photo

The former ValleyCrest Landscape office building at 24151 Ventura Blvd., Calabasas, sold for a record $24 million, said Lee & Associates-LA North/Ventura, the firm that helped broker the deal.

The 76,500-square-foot building went for $314 a square foot, “believed to be the highest per-square-foot price ever paid for a soon-to-be vacant building in the region,” the firm said in a statement.

Built as a headquarters for ValleyCrest in 2004, the iconic structure designed by Nadel Architects features 360-degree views of the Santa Monica mountains and a 17-acre campus with landscaped outdoor seating areas.

“This is a true trophy property that attracted multiple offers within 30 days of listing,” Lee agent Grant Fulkerson said.

The buyer of the building is Los Angeles real estate investor Paul Minoo’s 4M Investment Corp. The new owner will convert the building to a multi-tenant office building.

“While this type of conversion is costly, the cost is merited as the building can capture some of the highest rental rates in the marketplace,” said Lee’s Mike Tingus.

The property is located at the northern end of the city of Calabasas, just off Parkway Calabasas, a submarket that the brokerage team estimates has an office vacancy rate of 5%

Founded by the late Burt Sperber in 1949 when he was 19 years old, ValleyCrest grew to

9,000 employees and more than

150 nationwide locations with a celebrated list of clients that included Walt

Disney Concert

Hall and the Getty Center in Los Angeles; Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Tex., and Hudson River Park in New York City.

Michael Dell’s MSD fund acquired ValleyCrest in 2007 in one of private equity’s first major investments in the green industry.

In 2014 MSD sold a majority share to Brickman Group, an East Coast competitor owned by KKR & Co. The latest company, renamed BrightView, occupied the building in Calabasas in a leaseback that will expire at the end of this year when BrightView is expected to consolidate its operations into a new headquarters on Agoura Road in Calabasas.

Acorn staff report