Trammell Crow Buys Coast Federal Site for $23 Million

Developer Trammell Crow Co. said Monday that it has acquired the former Coast Federal Bank headquarters complex in West Hills for $23 million and plans a major renovation of the facility.

The company will spend $30 million to overhaul the 30.5-acre complex and build two new buildings on the site, at the western edge of the San Fernando Valley. Most of the project’s five buildings--totaling 372,000 square feet--will probably be leased to back-office tenants searching for affordable space in the area, said Mark W. Ossola, Trammell Crow’s vice president of development.

“It would be a lower-rent alternative to Warner Center,” said Ossola, referring to the prominent office park in nearby Woodland Hills.

Trammell Crow’s project is the latest effort to find new uses for what once was a sprawling, 86-acre aerospace campus owned by Hughes Aircraft. Hughes closed the facility in 1994, and the site was broken up into four parcels.

One section is being developed into a 20-acre campus for the DeVry Institute of Technology, and another portion will become home to a police dispatch center. Beverly Hills-based Regent Properties and another partner purchased a 30-acre section and created West Hills Corporate Village, where Boeing Co. has leased 170,000 square feet of space.

Trammell Crow purchased the parcel and buildings that briefly served as headquarters of the now-defunct Coast Federal Bank, which was acquired in 1997 by H.F. Ahmanson & Co., which in turn was taken over last year by Washington Mutual Inc. Trammell Crow was one of several interested bidders for the property when Washington Mutual put it up for sale.

The deal was brokered by Cushman & Wakefield.

Renovation of the existing structures will take about nine months, and the two new buildings should be completed by late summer 2000, Ossola said.