Taft Building Photo - P 2011
Charlie Lenoir/Lenoir PhotographyThe historic Taft Building, located at the southeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, has been listed for sale by longtime owner Langer Meringoff Properties. The 1680 Vine St. building is expected to fetch as much as $30 million, according to real estate sources with knowledge of the Hollywood market.
The 12-story tower was built in 1923 and over the years has housed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the offices of Charlie Chaplin and Will Rogers.
The 119,046-square-foot property is about 80 percent occupied and is home to several entertainment and media companies, including production company Last Exit Productions and music talent agency Evolution Music Partners, among others.
The property is being marketed to buyers who would operate it as an entertainment office building, according to listing agent Kevin Shannon of CBRE Group. It was listed about a month ago.
“The drive for creating value is to bring this into the 21st century and make it a modern, creative office [building],” Shannon said. “The media and entertainment tenants that gravitate to typical creative office space are going to eat this up once a renovation is done.”
The Taft Building has received incremental upgrades regularly since 1980s and in the last year or so has added a handful of retail tenants, including popular restaurant and bar Wood & Vine. The tower has roughly 9,000 square feet of retail space; it is next door to the W Hollywood Hotel & Residences and across from the Pantages Theatre.
The building is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument and is considered a contributing structure in the National Register of Historic Places’ Hollywood Boulevard Historic Commercial and Entertainment District.
“It’s an emotional type of asset because of what it is and its legacy,” Shannon said. “It is the place where Audrey Hepburn’s star is right out the front door.”
A handful of other entertainment office buildings have sold in Hollywood in recent months. In July, THR reported that the nearly three dozen individual owners of the Sunset Media Tower were nearing a deal to sell that 22-story building to Kilroy Realty Corp., a West Los Angeles real estate investment firm, for about $76.5 million.
And THR reported in August that Hudson Pacific Properties, a publicly traded commercial real estate investment firm that owns Sunset Gower Studios, is buying the 190,000-square-foot entertainment office building at 6922 Hollywood Blvd. from real estate investor CIM Group for roughly $92 million.
CBRE Group’s Tom Bohlinger, Ken White, Mark Perry and Michael Longo also have the Taft Building listing.
Email: Daniel.Miller@THR.com
Twitter: @DanielNMiller
