Calif. Taps Firm to Market Buildings for Sale-Leasebacks

SAN FRANCISCO — California has named global real estate services company CB Richard Ellis to market the 11 state office buildings it plans to sell to investors.

The state is planning to sell the buildings, while leasing the space back, in transactions designed to raise one-time money for its unbalanced budget.

Those deals, if consummated, will result in the early retirement of almost $1.2 billion of outstanding tax-exempt debt issued to finance construction of the properties. The state's lease payments on the space back the outstanding bonds.

According to the state's Department of General Services, which is charged with carrying out the transactions, eight of the 11 properties in the proposal are encumbered with lease-revenue bond debt. The figures range from $16.4 million for the attorney general's office building in Sacramento to $407.4 million for the Capitol East End Complex, a set of five office buildings that opened between 2002 and 2003 just east of the State Capitol.

CB Richard Ellis was selected this month after a request for proposals process that drew six responses. The firm's bid for the contract included a commission of less than half of 1% of the selling price of the properties, according to the notice of intent to award that the General Services department posted Dec. 3. It issued the final contract award to CB Richard Ellis last Thursday.

The sale-leaseback plan was approved in connection with this summer's budget revision package. Though most of the revisions were directed at closing a fiscal 2010 budget deficit that was projected to exceed $20 billion, the sale-leasebacks aren't expected to close until fiscal 2011.

The administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger projects that the state government will net between $600 million and $675 million in one-time money after selling the buildings and paying off the associated debt.

The state government will then become a long-term renter of the properties, three of which carry no outstanding bond debt and three others with final bond maturities scheduled by 2015.

The 11 properties include centrally located buildings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland, as well as a mix of central and suburban Sacramento locations.

They include the Ronald Reagan State Building in Los Angeles, the San Francisco headquarters of the state's Public Utilities Commission, and the Earl Warren/Hiram Johnson office complex in downtown San Francisco, where tenants include the state Supreme Court.

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