Palm restaurant in West Hollywood gets a new landlord
Buildings that are home to the well-known Palm restaurant and a Rolls-Royce dealership in West Hollywood have been acquired by a new Los Angeles investment firm.
Goldstein Planting Investments bought the two buildings and a parking lot from SunCor Development Co. and Chinatrust Bank in a deal valued at more than $8 million, founder Drew Planting said Thursday.
The purchase with partner Somera Capital Management was the first for Goldstein Planting, which has launched a $20-million investment fund focused on buying distressed properties in urban areas. Planting and Cliff Goldstein formed the firm last year after they left executive positions at Los Angeles developer and landlord J.H. Snyder Co.
The 27,000-square-foot property at Santa Monica Boulevard and Rampage Street has city approval for a mixed-use project including retail space and 80 condominiums, Planting said. The previous owners had hoped to develop the housing along with new quarters for the Palm before the recent housing market collapse.
Goldstein Planting hasn’t decided what it will do with the property, Planting said, but it expects the Palm to remain in the building it has occupied since 1975. The restaurant has been a popular celebrity haunt for decades, and its walls are covered with paintings of stars and Hollywood insiders.
Goldstein Planting hopes to invest in urban areas from the Bay Area to Los Angeles and may build new projects in the future, Planting said.
“We plan to be investors now and developers later,” he said.
