Whole Foods Santa Monica property sold to Deka Group
By Dolores Quintana
One of Europe’s largest investment firms has purchased a plot of land in Santa Monica containing a Whole Foods for over $50 million.
Tooley Interests, a real estate developer based in Santa Monica, sold the property to Deka Immobilien, the Deka Group’s division that handles real estate properties management for the company for $54.3 million as reported by Commercial Observer.com. The store is located at 2121 Cloverfield Boulevard and is 29,064 square feet of commercial space that houses the Whole Foods Market. Bayerische Landesbank financed $26 million of the cost and Deka used its Deka-ImmobilienNordamerika real estate fund to complete the purchase.
This property is the second asset added to Deka’s holdings on the West Coast after their acquisition of the Rockwood Lincoln office building in Downtown Los Angeles in late 2020. Before these purchases, Deka Immobilien, one of Europe’s biggest real estate investment firms, only had property holdings on the East Coast.
Driss Oualkadi, the president of Deka-Immobilien, highlighted the reason for the purchase of the property by commenting, as quoted by Commercial Observer.com, “Since grocery stores are experiencing record sales, we were drawn to this stand-alone, single-tenant Whole Foods Market, as it is the perfect investment for a long-term investor.
The property was bought by Tooley Interests back in 2013 and after putting in a substantial effort to redevelop the space, Whole Foods leased the space in 2017 and has remained there since.
The sale was brokered by JLL’s Gleb Lvovich, Geoff Tranchina, Bryan Ley and Dan Tyne. Lovich said, as quoted by Commercial Observer.com, “The sale of Whole Foods Santa Monica demonstrates continued demand for net-leased real estate in strong locations with credit and a durable business.”
During the pandemic, real estate investors have put their trust and their money into investing in grocery store properties as seen with the sale of a Westside Amazon Fresh store that was purchased for $55 million last year.
