Businessman and architect Charles Luckman, known for his company's design of Madison Square Garden in the late 1960s and NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston would be turning in his grave with surpise over the price of commercial real estate in Los Angeles County today. The area is seeing a run up in prices over the last five years that may rival the rise in value of real estate in the area's residential market. Luckman's former West Hollywood headquarters of his architecture firm on Nov. 2 sold for a reported $155 million. The purchase by Los Angeles-based Mani Bros. Real Estate Group for the two Sunset Boulevard office buildings amounts to $525 per square foot. The price joins the rising numbers for commercial properties in the area. The L.A. Times says Two Woodland Hills towers sold for more than $560 per square foot in 2004 and the Wilshire Roxbury Building in Beverly Hills sold for $484 a square foot. Adding to the mystique of the Luckman complex was that he designed and built the buildings himself in the mid-1960s and lived in the tower's penthouse until his death in 1999 at the age of 89. — Gerald Magpily
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