Neiman Marcus parent sells its Beverly Hills site | Real Estate news

The land below the Beverly Hills flagship store of luxurious retailer Neiman Marcus has been offered to a New York investor as the homeowners of the division store chain promote property to pay money owed.

Neiman Marcus, which has occupied the 9700 Wilshire Boulevard store since it opened in 1979, will continue to serve clients there as a tenant.

“We made the strategic decision to sell the land beneath the Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills store and enter into a long-term lease with the new owner,” said a spokesperson for Saks Global. “This opportunistic real estate transaction does not impact our day-to-day operations. We remain committed to serving our loyal Beverly Hills customers.”

Saks Global, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Saks Off fifth and Bergdorf Goodman, offered the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus building for an undisclosed price.

The new proprietor of the marble-clad property on the sting of town’s prestigious Golden Triangle is Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., a non-public real estate investment firm owned by Ben Ashkenazy.

Ashkenazy also owns the previous Barneys building on Wilshire Boulevard that is now occupied by Saks Fifth Avenue.

“This strategic acquisition significantly expands Ashkenazy’s presence in Beverly Hills and reinforces the firm’s focus on irreplaceable, best-in-class retail assets located in globally recognized luxury corridors,” the company said in a assertion.

Executives at Saks Global have signaled plans to shore up money by offloading shops, or raising emergency financing.

It may also half with a stake in luxurious retail chain Bergdorf Goodman to help repay money owed and reinvest in its core retail business, real estate data supplier CoStar said.

The company faces a $100-million debt fee deadline at the end of December and is contemplating Chapter 11 chapter as a last resort, Bloomberg said. The scramble comes a 12 months after Saks Global bought Neiman Marcus in a $2.7-billion deal.

The Beverly Hills retail property market is still one of the most strong in the nation, said real estate broker Jay Luchs of Newmark. He was not concerned in the Neiman Marcus property sale, but has brokered gross sales and leases of luxurious shops in Southern California for more than twenty years.

“This is probably the best it’s ever been in Beverly Hills,” he said, with “essentially nothing available” on Rodeo Drive for retailers in search of store space and demand climbing on close by streets such as Wilshire Boulevard.

Some top-shelf manufacturers are making their shops bigger, and luxurious manufacturers, including LVMH, Chanel, Hermes and Richemont, are shopping for their shops instead of renting them, he said.

“They don’t do that unless they’re making a tremendous amount of money, unless they want to be there forever,” Luchs said, “and they realize that Los Angeles and Beverly Hills is a very important market for them.”