Amazon’s Santa Barbara office sold in one of downtown’s biggest commercial deals ever
Amazon’s downtown Santa Barbara building got a new landlord when the property was sold in early December to an international investor.
Global Mutual, a London-based investment firm, bought the three-story building for close to its listed price of $38.4 million, making it one of the largest sales ever of commercial property in the downtown Santa Barbara commercial business district. The deal included both the building, located at 1001 State Street, and the acre of land under it.
Austin Herlihy and Chris Parker of Radius Commercial Real Estate and Dan Riley, Austin Wolitarsky and Simon Mattox of CBRE represented the seller in the transaction. The seller, according to property records and state corporate filings, is 1001 State Street Partners LLC, which is owned by Michael Rosenfeld, the CEO of the Los Angeles real estate development and investment company Woodridge Capital Partners.
The building is guaranteed to host Amazon at least through 2029 under the current leasing contract. The property has a net operating income of roughly $1.8 million in its first year, according to figures released by Radius, and sold for its full listing price.
That means that even though offices like Amazon’s downtown building have been almost entirely abandoned because of the pandemic, with the current health order mandating working-from-home for all but the most essential employees, Global Mutual saw 1001 State Street as an investment that will pay off in time.
The building is around 48,000 square feet and recently went through a $20 million renovation to make it Amazon’s home on State Street, where the company develops technology for the Alexa virtual assistant. Before the remodel, the building housed a Saks Fifth Avenue and later a Saks Off Fifth.
