Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...OAKLAND — One of the landmarks of the Oakland skyline has been foreclosed due to a failed loan, a grim new indicator that the Bay Area office market remains feeble with no immediate remedies in sight.
The Clorox Building at 1221 Broadway in downtown Oakland has been taken back through a speedy foreclosure process, documents filed on June 16 with the Alameda County Recorder’s Office show.
The deed in lieu of foreclosure for the Clorox tower represents one of the latest examples of the brutal economic conditions for the office market in Oakland and elsewhere in the Bay Area.
Loan failures and fading values have begun to haunt a growing number of office buildings in the East Bay’s largest city.
An alliance of private equity titan KKR and real estate firm TMG Partners returned the Clorox Building to its lender as a result of the swift foreclosure, the county documents show.
Heitman Capital Management took back the office tower, which is part of the City Center mixed-use complex. The Heitman Capital affiliate that now owns the property placed a value of $258.3 million on the Clorox Building through the foreclosure.
An affiliate of KKR and TMG bought the Clorox Building in 2018, paying $253.5 million for the tower, Alameda County documents show. KKR obtained a $239.6 million loan from Heitman Capital at the time of its purchase.
At the time that transaction occurred, commercial real estate experts described the purchase as the largest single-asset purchase in Oakland’s history. The Clorox tower totals about 535,000 square feet.
In 2015, the Clorox Building was bought for $165.4 million, according to Alameda County property documents.
Oakland-based Clorox has its world headquarters in the building and is the anchor tenant for the tower. In 2012, Clorox sold the building for $110 million. The Clorox tower’s other tenants include Brown & Towland.