Former NBA hoops star Josh Childress has bought a shopping center and office building across the street from South Coast Plaza.
The Stanford University graduate—estimated to have earned about $60 million during his NBA and overseas basketball career—bought Sunflower Plaza, a roughly 27,000-square-foot property at the intersection of South Bristol Street and Sunflower Avenue in Santa Ana.
The site includes an office leased to Bank of the West, while the retail portion of the property is occupied by The Vitamin Shoppe, Allstate Insurance, Jersey Mike’s, Panera Bread and others.
Childress, through his newly formed Childress Ventures LLC entity, paid $9.6 million for the property, about $356 per square foot. It’s his first commercial real estate investment. State records show the LLC is based in Irvine.
Eyzenberg & Company LLC’s Jeff Conti and Mila Babenko arranged a $7.4 million commercial mortgage-backed securities loan from Morgan Stanley to finance the deal.
Investment banker David Eyzenberg started the New York-based commercial real estate investment banking firm in 2016; he has consulted for the NBA Players Union in the past, according to Childress.
Sunflower Plaza is next to Bristol Center, a 102,000-square-foot, multibuilding retail center that sold in May for about $46.5 million, or $233 per square foot.
Bristol Center was in the news in August after an airplane crashed in its parking lot, killing five.
Hotel Loan, Part 1
An Embassy Suites hotel near Disneyland Resort is planning a $16 million renovation following a new loan for its owners.
Irvine-based Landmark Cos. recently received a $71 million loan for its Embassy Suites by Hilton Anaheim South, a 375-room property that, despite its name, is in Garden Grove, about half a mile south of the Anaheim Convention Center.
The 14-story property is Orange County’s 24th largest hotel by room count; it also includes nearly 11,000 square feet of meeting space.
Landmark’s new 10-year, fixed-rate, interest only loan was arranged by CBRE Hotels’ Marc Sallette, Olga Lepow, Cara Leonard and Charlie Ryan.
The debt is split into a $56 million senior mortgage that will be securitized by Deutsche Bank, while Artemis Real Estate Partners of New York provided a $15 million junior mezzanine loan.
Landmark developed the property in 2001. A majority of the new mortgage is extinguishing existing loans, according to CBRE Hotels.
The company’s planning a five-year renovation project, which will cost roughly $43,000 per room.
Hotel Loan, Part 2
About two miles north of the Embassy Suites, a four-star hotel development that’s been under construction for several weeks has a new construction loan.
Portland-based BPM Real Estate Group, the primary developers of a 326-key, four-star Radisson Blu hotel at 1601 S. Anaheim Blvd., recently received a $115 million nonrecourse senior construction loan for its project, according to Los Angeles-based George Smith Partners Inc., whose Malcolm Davies and Zachary Streit helped secure the loan.
The construction loan—roughly $323,000 per room—was provided by 3650 REIT, a national commercial real estate portfolio lender with local offices in Newport Beach.
“This is one of the most well-located development sites in Orange County,” Davies said in a statement.
“While there are nearly 300 Radisson Blu luxury hotels worldwide, the Anaheim Radisson Blu will be only the fourth of its kind in the U.S.,” said Streit.
The Radisson Blu project will run 12 stories, and it’s located to the immediate north of the Santa Ana (5) Freeway.
The hotel will feature a ground-floor swimming pool with food and beverage offerings, as well as a rooftop pool deck, which will deliver unobstructed views of the Disneyland fireworks show.
The development will feature an innovative, modern design with a focus on family-friendly amenities, with nearly half of the guest rooms offering bunk beds, according to a statement.
