In collaboration with its institutional partner, this will be Soma Capital’s third exit in the past year

San Francisco, CA, January 26, 2017 – Soma Capital Partners (SCP), a privately held real estate investment and advisory firm, today announced the sale of 2120 University Avenue in Berkeley, CA to Lionstone Investments. The 50,000 square foot, Class A office property sits two blocks from Downtown Berkeley BART and sold for $22.25 million, a record price per square foot in Berkeley. The sale was completed in late December 2016.

SCP acquired the vacant Berkeley property in 2013 from Alameda County through a public auction. The entire 42,000 square feet of office space was leased by SCP to WeWork Companies, which opened in early 2015 and was 93% occupied by WeWork members at the time of sale. The remaining space, consisting of ground floor retail, was leased to Blue Bottle Coffee and Ippudo Ramen Brasserie out of Manhattan, which opened their first West Coast location in Berkeley.

The sale of the WeWork Building is the third exit for SCP in the past year, including the sale of a 168-unit multifamily property in Atlanta, GA which was acquired as a non-performing loan through Auction.com, and the sale of Warren Office Center in Warren, NJ, which was a core-plus investment in a 60,000-square-foot medical office building acquired through a fund recapitalization in 2013. SCP closed all three investments in partnership with a large institutional investor based in Seattle, WA.

Jordan Caspari, Partner with SCP, commented, “We have been a net seller over the past year given strong demand from buyers looking for stabilized product. We are very pleased with the outcome of the transactions.”

David Smith, Partner with SCP, added, “We are grateful for the support from our investment partner who has consistently allowed us to move quickly and take advantage of clear market inefficiencies over the past three years.”

For more information on Soma Capital Partners, please visit the firm’s website, www.soma-capital.com.

About Soma Capital Partners
SCP is a privately held real estate investment manager that acquires commercial properties West of Denver and invests on a special situations basis nationally through structured transactions including note purchases, preferred equity, and recapitalizations. The partners of SCP have raised and invested over $100 million of equity nationally, across all major asset classes, since 2012.

###