Copa de Oro Apartments On Los Robles Ave. are Sold

The 38-unit Copa de Oro Apartments, on North Los Robles Avenue at East Maple Street in Pasadena’s West Central neighborhood, have new owners, who told Pasadena Now on Wednesday they plan to “spruce up” the rental property, “but we’re not doing anything major.’’

“The building has been owned by a long-term owner for quite a while and hasn’t really invested in infrastructure upgrades, so we really plan on improving the common areas, sprucing it up, as it were, because it’s dated now,’’ said Kamyar Shabani, co-principal with his brother Joseph of Optimus Properties  a Century City-based real-estate company that announced this week’s sale on Wednesday.

“Our plan is to rehabilitate vacant units as they open by modernizing the interiors to be competitive with Old Town Pasadena inventory,’’ Kamyar Shabani said in a news release.

Current rents at the property, located at 400 North Los Robles Ave., range from around $1,500 a month for a one-bedroom to slightly under $2,000 for a two-bedroom, Shabani said. The 1958-built building contains 27 one-bedroom units and 11 two-bedroom units.

Terms of the sale were not disclosed, and Shabani declined to specify the price in an interview with Pasadena Now.

The real-estate website LoopNet.com listed the offering price of the property at $11.4 million, or $300,000 per unit.

Wednesday’s news release said Optimus “beat out several potential buyers.”

The building is adjacent to the 210 freeway, within walking distance to Old Pasadena and the Gold Light Rail’s Lake station.

“The property attracted numerous offers from potential buyers because of the rarity of the offering, overall sales inventory for this generational neighborhood, and proximity to the new Light Rail Gold line,’’ said Joseph Shabani.

Stephen R. Whitmore, a spokesman for L.A. County Assessor Jeff Prang, said the property had previously been owned, since 2004, by Copa De Oro En Los Robles, LLC.

With the economy reeling from the coronavirus crisis, the sale represents a measure of optimism about the city’s long-term economic health, Kamyar Shabani said.

“We are aware that the current market conditions are unsettling, but our conviction is that Pasadena will remain a strong rental market despite the intermediate downturn, and the purchase price reflected the current uncertainties in the marketplace,’’ he said.

“We believe that local transportation initiatives, and strong economic fundamentals, support our position on the Pasadena market.”
Shabani said the deal took about 2 ½ months to complete.

“It got slightly delayed because of the pandemic, and we, the buyer and the seller, were very cooperative, just taking into account obviously everything that’s going on in the world,’’ he said.

“The broker was very helpful in getting us to a satisfactory conclusion, given how difficult the situation is, and given escrow offices are remote and all the things you would imagine are going on.’’

Optimus also owns retail buildings, office buildings, medical-office buildings and multi-family properties, mostly in Southern California, but also in Washington and New Mexico. Shabani said the company’s portfolio includes about two dozen apartment buildings.

Before the Copa de Oro purchase, Optimus bought a 20-unit apartment building on Westwood Boulevard in the Palms section of Culver City for $6.065 million, according to a news release on Monday.

Copa de Oro is Optimus’s first multi-family purchase in Pasadena, and Shabani said the company plans to stay in the city for the long haul.
“We’re long-term holders of this deal,’’ he said. “We like the asset, we like the layout, we like the bones of the building. … We would hope to own this for many, many years.’’

He also said, “We’re pride-of-ownership owners. We really take pride in investing money in deals, and this is a deal that we’re going to be investing a lot of money (in) over the long term.’’

Besides landscaping improvements and painting, Shabani said improvements on individual apartments as they open up will include “stainless-steel appliances, quartz counter tops, new bathroom tiles, back-splash – it’ll be very nice when it’s done.’’

He said the building may also need a new roof, but that “now’s not the time to do a new roof, because it would be so noisy — it’s just not appropriate to do it now with everybody indoors. So those types of things have got to wait.’’

The name of the building will stay the same, Shabani said.

“We’re keeping the name, we like the name, we think it’s great,’’ he said.