Hackman Capital and Samitaur to Manage Culver City Portfolio

Hackman Capital Partners has partnered with Laurie Samitaur Smith of Samitaur Constructs to manage a 26-building, mixed-use portfolio in Culver City.

The locally based Hackman teamed up with the Culver City-based developer to oversee the 800,000-square-foot Conjunctive Points portfolio, a neighborhood of creative offices, restaurants and parks in the city’s Hayden Tract, the Commercial Observer reported.

The 26.7-acre portfolio was developed more than 35 years ago by its owner, Samitaur Constructs, the firm Samitaur Smith operated with her late husband Frederick, a former assistant to Pablo Picasso, who died in 2019.

Chicago-based JLL will join Hackman Capital to help manage the portfolio, while brokers Micheal Geller and Gabe Brown of JLL, along with brokers Josh Bernstein and Alexa Delahooke of Cushman & Wakefield, will handle property leasing.

Office tenants of Conjunctive Points include Nike, game developer Scopely, Jukin Media, restaurant Vespertine and food ordering platform ChowNow.

Kevin Shannon, co-head of U.S. Capital Markets for Newmark, helped put together the partnership deal. Terms of the arrangement were not disclosed.

“[Hackman Capital] was the obvious and most strategic choice, given their existing commitment to the submarket, to help Laurie manage the massive Conjunctive Points portfolio,” Shannon said in a statement.

Jonathan Firestone, co-president of Global Debt and Structured Finance for Newmark, helped arrange new financing for the portfolio. Details of the financing package were not disclosed.

The Hayden Tract was developed as an industrial zone in the 1940s, then mostly abandoned over the decades. The Smiths, along with architect Eric Owen Moss, began redeveloping it in the 1980s with a focus on adaptive reuse and eclectic design.

In 2018, their Samitaur Constructs landed a $231.6 million loan from what is now Affinius Capital and Deutsche Bank tied to part of Conjunctive Points, including the (W)rapper Tower, a 16-story office building noted for its steel band exoskeleton.

“Laurie and her late husband Frederick were really the first pioneers of the Hayden Tract, when they acquired land in the 1970s and began to reposition the vintage industrial area into the diverse and vibrant mixed-use neighborhood it has become today,” Michael Hackman, founder and CEO of Hackman Capital, said in a statement.

Hackman Capital this month beat back appeals to its $1.25 billion plan to redevelop Television City in Fairfax with more soundstages, offices and shops. The owner of the 25-acre landmark projection complex once known as CBS Television City won approval from the Los Angeles City Planning Commission.

— Dana Bartholomew