Developer Shenzhen Hazens Buys Los Angeles Hotel for $105M

China bought another piece of California last week when a Shenzhen-based real estate developer scooped up the Luxe City Center Hotel and two adjacent plots of land near the Staples Center for $105 million.

The 178-room hostelry is the second hotel purchase by privately held Shenzhen Hazens Real Estate Group Co in less than a year, after the Guangdong firm spent $96 million on the 15-story, 802-room Sheraton Gateway LAX Hotel, near Los Angeles International Airport, last December.

The Luxe hotel, which is located at at 1020 S. Figueroa St. in Los Angeles, was sold by Beverly Hills developer Emerik Properties Corp. The site is across the street from the Staples Center and LA Live.

California Becoming a Target for Chinese Capital

Chinese investment in California real estate is becoming common enough that Shenzhen Hazen’s purchase is not only not the first Chinese project in LA, it’s not even the first Chinese invested project on this block.

In early January this year, Oceanwide Real Estate Group (000046.SZ) acquired the $200 million Fig Central on Figueroa Street, also across from the Staples Centre. So Hazen’s new hotel will have Chinese neighbors.

Also, the $1 billion Metropolis project, which Shanghai-based Greenland Group broke ground on in February of this year, is just north of the Staples Center.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Hazens has plans to invest at least $250 milliont to develop condos and an office tower on the vacant plots of land next to its new hotel. As for the hotel itself, the developer is said to be considering tearing it down and replacing it with something more posh.

In addition to Hazens’ acquisition last week, Dalian Wanda, the property developer belonging to China’s richest man, announced on Friday that it had beaten out ten other bidders to acquire the former site of the Robinson’s-May department store in Beverly Hills, and in May a privately held Chinese golf course developer bought the former Standard Oil Building in San Francisco for $350 million.