‘Tower Burbank’ Changes Ownership
The tallest office building in Burbank, Tower Burbank located at 3900 West Alameda Avenue is being taken over by Worthe Real Estate Group.
Tower Burbank is a 32-story Class A office building located in the city’s media district. It is a 487,000 square foot building that was once more than 95 percent occupied with the its main tenant – Walt Disney Co. Today, the building is mostly vacant with only 5,000 square feet being occupied by a Union Bank Inc. branch.
Worthe Real Estate Group assumes control with a purchase price of $109 million. This is a considerably cheaper investment compared to BlackRock Inc.’s 2005 purchase of the property for $167 million. Worthe Real Estate Group already owns 14 Burbank properties, which equals nearly 3.8 million square feet of commercial real estate. By acquiring Tower Burbank, Worthe will now own close to 60 percent of Burbank’s 7.3 million square feet of office space. This makes them ideally placed to dictate tenant mixes in their properties, as well as the overall Burbank market.
The main concern with this acquisition is the vast amount of vacant space. Burbank has an average asking rent of $3.05 per square foot of office space.