Office Buildings

Newport Beach real estate investment management firm Buchanan Street Partners bought a Rancho Cucamonga office building for $10.6 million. Buchanan bought a 75,000-square-foot building in HavenPark, a master-planned office campus, from Dallas-based Thackeray Partners. The three-story building at 9680 Haven Ave. was completed in 2007 during the last real estate boom and is 89% leased. “We are pleased to acquire this building at a significant discount to replacement costs,” said Kimberly Stevenson, a Buchanan vice president.

The Hollywood stalwart Musicians Institute College of Contemporary Music has expanded again with the purchase of two buildings on Highland Avenue. The music school paid $6.2 million for two buildings totaling 18,662 square feet, real estate broker Kathleen Silver said. The property includes an office building at 1518 Highland Ave., a retail building next door at 1522 Highland Ave., a billboard and a parking lot. Musicians Institute already occupies the two-story office building, which it has been leasing.

Orange County social service staffers who say they work inside a toxic building that has made them sick now contend that the county has tossed out some of their most damning evidence -- 350 tons of potentially contaminated soil. But on Friday, when the employees' union went to court to get a restraining order to prevent any more soil from being disposed of, the judge said it was too late. "Whatever has occurred, has occurred," Orange County Superior Court Judge Steven Perk said.

Former executives of office landlord MPG Office Trust Inc. have launched their own property company with the purchase of a landmark Los Angeles office building. Nelson and Christopher Rising of Rising Realty Partners expect their acquisition of Pacific Center at 6th and Olive streets to close Monday. Terms of the purchase from Alliance Commercial Partners were not revealed, but experts familiar with downtown real estate prices value the deal at $60 million. The new owners will change the name of the complex to the PacMutual Building, in keeping with origins of the Beaux Arts-style complex that can be traced to railroad tycoons Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins.

Former executives of office landlord MGP Office Trust have launched their own property company with the purchase of a landmark Los Angeles office building. Nelson and Christopher Rising of Rising Realty Partners expect their acquisition of Pacific Center at Sixth and Olive streets to close Monday. Terms of the purchase from Alliance Commercial Partners were not revealed, but experts familiar with downtown real estate prices value the deal at $60 million. The new owners will change the name of the complex to the PacMutual Building, in keeping with the origins of the Beaux Arts style complex that can be traced to railroad tycoons Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins.

The former Marina del Rey headquarters of automotive legend Carroll Shelby was sold along with two office buildings for $6.5 million. Shelby, once a race car driver, set up shop for his fledgling car company Shelby-American at 1042 Princeton Drive in March 1962, his website said. That year he introduced his first Cobra sports car, and in 1963 a Cobra won the United States Road Racing Championship. The company operated out of a red brick industrial and office complex built in the late 1950s that, according to books on Shelby, had previously been leased by playboy race car driver and entrepreneur Lance Reventlow.

Playa Vista was the last major coastal community in Los Angeles to be built, but a crucial retail development to give it its own downtown was stalled by legal challenges. That's about to change. With court victories in hand, developers have unveiled the design of a long-anticipated shopping and apartment complex they will begin building in June as the key element of the second and final phase of Playa Vista. The $260-million project, called Runway at Playa Vista, is intended to be the commercial and social heart of the planned community that has been under construction for more than a decade on land once controlled by aviation mogul Howard Hughes south of Marina del Rey. Playa Vista already has more than 3,200 residences and 2 million square feet of offices but lacks a commercial and social town center, said Patti Sinclair, co-president of Playa Capital, the master developer of Playa Vista.

Endemol USA, the producer of the house-fixing television show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” has more than doubled the size of its own quarters in West Hollywood and North Hollywood. Endemol develops popular reality-style shows such as “Big Brother” and “Wipeout” as well as scripted dramas including the railroad western “Hell on Wheels” on AMC. The company has consolidated in two office buildings while expanding its overall space to 75,000 square feet, said broker Michael P. Arnold of Newmark Knight Frank.

A powerful and prolonged earthquake rocked Mexico on Tuesday, toppling houses near the epicenter in the south, cracking building facades in this sprawling capital and briefly terrifying a population well schooled in natural disasters. Despite the quake's 7.4 magnitude, however, there were no reports of serious injury, according to President Felipe Calderon and officials across the country. Aftershocks rattled the area through the rest of the day. "This is one of the strongest we've ever felt," said Calderon, who urged Mexicans to remain calm.