Ethan Conrad buys office building near Golden 1 Center, plans retail conversion
By Ben van der Meer – Senior Reporter, Sacramento Business Journal
Real estate investor Ethan Conrad has bought a Downtown Sacramento office building near Golden 1 Center, for a future that doesn’t involve an office use at all.
Conrad announced Wednesday he’d closed escrow a day earlier on 630 K St., a five-story office building vacant at the moment apart from a few ground-floor and basement retail spaces.
“This property is very well located at the easternmost entrance to the DOCO and is very close to the main entrance to the arena, and therefore, it has a significant amount of foot traffic, especially when there are events at the arena,” Conrad said in the announcement email to his staff, shared with the Business Journal. “We’ll be converting this building from being primarily an office building (Floors 2 through 5 are office space) to an urban retail building.”
As part of that plan, Conrad said, he already has interest from a long-standing restaurant and card room in the region to lease all the building’s fifth floor as well about 4,000square feet of the building’s roof. He did not identify the potential tenant.
Other building plans call for adding a glass elevator to provide access to the upper floors, he said. “We’re currently studying the feasibility and cost for installing this elevator, but it appears to be feasible,” he said.
A rendering in a new leasing brochure for the building by Ethan Conrad Properties Inc. shows that glass elevator on the building’s north side, near the free-standing “DOCO” monument sign for the Downtown Commons complex around Golden 1 Center.
Conrad said he paid $10.3 million for the building. “This is a prime location where there’s significantly more demand for retail space vs. office space, and retail space commands a significantly higher rent,” he said in an email.
At the time of sale, the building was 86,244 square feet and 28% leased. The brochure shows no tenants on the upper floors, while the ground floor and basement have tenants such as Tipsy Putt, a U.S. Bank branch and T-Mobile.
On the northeast corner of the ground floor, Starbucks recently vacated a 4,000-square-foot space. Conrad said in his purchase announcement that the company has interest in that space from coffee vendors and similar users, and he expected a new tenant soon.
He said the property was also a good purchase because of two electronic billboards on the building that provide regular income.
Ethan Conrad Properties is just starting to explore converting the building, Conrad said, but he expected city officials to support it because he believed the city would prefer the building have a retail use.
In March 2020, New York Life Real Estate Investors, an arm of New York Life Insurance Company, bought the building for $28.1 million. Within days, the Covid-19 pandemic halted public events in Downtown Sacramento and upended traditional working schedules for offices, dealing the property two significant blows.
A message sent to a media representative for New York Life Insurance on Wednesday was not immediately returned.
Kevin Partington of Cushman & Wakefield brokered the sale on behalf of the seller.
