Owned by local firm MJW Investments, the same group that developed Santee Village, the Sears building complex at Olympic Boulevard and Soto Street in Boyle Heights has been off and on the market for at least the last couple of years (famously, Oscar De La Hoya promised he was going to buy it--and more than once). Lo and behold, the site is up for grabs again--and there's a new web site for the project. The listing is a tricky, but interesting: Part of the building--the Sear tower portion--was designated a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument, and it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the California Register of Historic Places.
Additionally, Sears signed a 99-year lease a few years back, so the store isn't going anywhere. But the department store only takes up a small portion of the 1.8 million square foot space, and all the upper floors are empty. It can be all retail, or mixed-used. Perhaps an imaginative person would take inspiration from the transformation of Culver City's Helms Bakery complex?
And more via the listing: "Sears Roebuck & Company store made the site an important crossroads. Following the completion of the Boyle Heights Sears building in 1927, the company continued to expand the catalog through succeeding decades. The building is one of nine Sears mail-order retail centers erected nationally between 1910 and the onset of the Great Depression." There's no official asking price, but we hear the sellers believe the right price is around $30 million.
· Olympic and Soto [Official Site]
· De La Hoya Drops Out of Sears Deal (Again!) [Curbed LA]
Loading comments...