{"id":219657,"date":"2026-03-14T15:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T15:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/219657\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T15:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T15:29:09","slug":"izek-shomofs-long-beach-office-to-resi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/219657\/","title":{"rendered":"Izek Shomof\u2019s Long Beach Office-to-Resi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can downtown Los Angeles make a comeback? Izek Shomof, who was part of its earlier revival and once called the \u201cKing of Spring\u201d because of the developer\u2019s transformation of the Spring Street corridor in the early 2000s, thinks it can. That\u2019s his number one goal, bringing the city back to what it was before the pandemic. Developers and investors need to work with politicians to fix the homelessness crisis, and then they can take back the streets, he said. It is easier said than done.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, he has another project, in another downtown, on his mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shomof and I sat on the 10th floor of his recent, highly discounted Long Beach buy<\/a> and discussed his plans to turn the offices into apartments<\/a>. He purchased the office tower on Ocean Boulevard for $50 million, or about $109 per square foot. The 24-story, 460,000 square foot property had a $135.5 million price tag a decade earlier.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He previously snagged another in Glendale, and so that broker reached out about Long Beach \u2014 and Shomof was in. Because of the deep discount, the numbers made sense, he said. At the prior price tag, he\u2019d have to charge $10,000 monthly rents for a conversion to pencil. His price probably puts it closer to the average of $2,000.<\/p>\n

The office tower is around 50 percent occupied, so he\u2019ll convert the vacant space first, allowing the tenants, who have around three to five year leases, to stay.<\/p>\n

Shomof was among the first developers to make use of Los Angeles\u2019 adaptive reuse ordinance, and he has done his fair share of conversions. The hardest parts are approval times and fees, he said. The \u201cfees are killing us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For the Long Beach tower, he hopes to complete it in five years, and said he can break ground as soon as he gets the greenlight from the city. He doesn\u2019t see any reason why he wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Shomof walked me through the fully vacant 10th floor, which helped me visualize how each of the 391 apartments would have a view of the ocean or the skyline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The next step is to find a tenant for the ground-floor restaurant at the corner of Pine Avenue and Ocean Boulevard. Solita\u2019s Tacos and Margaritas sign is still up \u2014 and speaking of signage, Wells Fargo can keep its top signage as long as the bank is there, Shomof said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Favor<\/p>\n

A lot of the people in Los Angeles\u2019 inner commercial real estate circle wanted Rick Caruso to run for office \u2026 mayor or governor. He chose not to, and he hasn\u2019t endorsed a mayoral candidate, but the billionaire developer has totally endorsed California governor hopeful Matt Mahan. Does that make him heir to the what-would-have-been Caruso vote?\u00a0<\/p>\n

What we know is that Mahan has a roster of some heavy-hitters of the real estate world in his corner. His Los Angeles benefactors<\/a> include Caruso, Victor Coleman\u2019s Hudson Pacific Properties, Douglas Emmett\u2019s Jordan Kaplan, Related California\u2019s Bill Witte and \u201cSelling Sunset\u201d star Jason Oppenheim. (The San Jose mayor counts the Sobrato Organization as a backer, too).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oh, and there\u2019s a L.A. fundraiser in the works co-hosted by Oppenheim and Caruso. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n

Kilroy shuffle<\/p>\n

Late last month, Kilroy Realty reshuffled its board of directors. The real estate investment trust helmed by Angela Aman, named a new board chair, and chairs of the audit and executive compensation committees (all internal moves). So, let\u2019s take a look at the cash they\u2019ll pocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chairman Gary Stevenson\u2019s annual cash compensation will be $175,000; Edward Brennan, now chair of the audit committee, will take home $110,000; and chair of the executive compensation committee Jolie Hunt, $105,000.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bit of musical chairs: Stevenson succeeded Brennan as chair of the board (Brennan was interim chair of the audit committee, too), and Hunt replaced Stevenson as exec comp chair when he was elevated to the only chair that really matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bren exits another downtown<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s richest real estate developer Donald Bren appears to be ditching downtowns. Last year, Irvine Company sold its last downtown San Diego office tower after a year-long, discounted selling spree (and may be selling another in downtown Chicago). Now, Irvine Co. sold<\/a> a downtown Pasadena office building, also at a discount. The behemoth sold the Pasadena property to East West Bank for about $98 million, after purchasing it for $144 million in 2012. What\u2019s next?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tRead more
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Izek\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Izek Shomof lands deep discount on prime Long Beach office tower<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Victor\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Coleman joins Caruso, Witte, Oppenheim to highlight industry backing of Mahan\u2019s bid for governor<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can downtown Los Angeles make a comeback? Izek Shomof, who was part of its earlier revival and once…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132,100605],"class_list":["post-219657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles-commercial-real-estate-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}