Rising Realty Pioneers Difficult Nabes

LOS ANGELES—Rising Realty Partners has found success gravitating toward more difficult neighborhoods and properties. The company has been a long proponent of the Downtown Los Angeles market—long before the recent renaissance captured investor’s hearts and dollars. Nelson Rising, Rising Realty’s chairman and CEO, partnered with developer Maguire Thomas to build Liberty Square, which houses the US Bank Tower and Gas Company Tower; while, the company recently cultivated the once downtrodden Pershing Square market with its renovation of the PacMutual Building, which sold this week for $200 million.

“We know the every building down here, and we know the tenant base. Our general investment thesis is that we like submarkets that have been out of favor for a long time, but that have the potential to be a catalyst for change,” Matt Ahrens, SVP of acquisitions and capital markets at Rising Realty, tells GlobeSt.com in an exclusive interview. “Downtown Los Angeles definitely has that catalyst. First with Staples Center, then with the County’s investment to build out the metro system that all converges in downtown, and, of course the residential development going on down here. The reason why we like submarkets that are out of favor is because they fill up with marginal landlords, and when we come into a market like Downtown Los Angeles, we can build the product that tenants want and we can really out-compete.”