Lincoln Property Gets Blackstone Loan for LA Offices

Lincoln Property Company got a $197 million acquisition loan from Blackstone Group to finance its purchase of The Bluffs at Playa Vista office complex, sources told The Real Deal.

Lincoln Property, along with its partner Strategic Value Partners, paid $187.5 million for the 500,000-square-foot office campus that counts Google and Flexport as tenants. The acquisition loan includes additional funds for lease up and office costs.

Representatives for Lincoln Property and Blackstone did not respond to requests for comment.

A Newmark team led by Jonathan Firestone and Jordan Roeschlaub arranged the financing.

The new owners purchased the property at 12121 and 12181 Bluff Creek Drive after Edward Minskoff’s EJM Equities defaulted on a $271 million Morgan Stanley debt earlier this year. Minskoff had purchased the complex from JPMorgan Chase for $413 million in 2016.

At the time, Fox Interactive Media occupied almost all of the property on a lease that expired in 2021. Google signed up for about 52,000 square feet in 2022.

The campus was about 70 percent vacant in October, according to data from CoStar.

Playa Vista had gained a reputation as a tech hub attracting tenants such as Google, Snap, Tinder and Twitter — earning it the nickname Silicon Beach. But many of the companies have cut back their office footprints in recent years.

In May, LaSalle Investment Management sold two Playa Vista office buildings at 5340 Alla Road and 12901 West Jefferson Boulevard in separate transactions for $50.3 million, about half what the JLL subsidiary paid for them seven years ago.

In February, Facebook put 130,000 square feet, or about half its Playa Vista footprint, on the market for sublease.

Roughly 40 percent of the office space in Playa Vista and Marina del Rey was available in the second quarter, according to Savills.