Chanel pays record price for retail space on Rodeo Drive

Chanel has purchased its store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills for about $152 million.

(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

French luxury retailer Chanel paid a record price for retail space on Rodeo Drive amid continued strong demand for properties along the swanky Beverly Hills corridor.

Chanel bought its 11,500-square-foot store at 400 N. Rodeo Drive, which it had been leasing, for about $152 million, or $13,217 per square foot, according to Elkins Kalt Weintraub Reuben Gartside, one of the law firms involved in the transaction.

That's a record high for the famous three-block Rodeo Drive area, which also includes such familiar luxury retailers as Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Gucci and Prada, said Scott Kalt, one of the law firm's founding partners.

The price reflects the economy's rebound from the severe recession a few years ago, a major influx of foreign money into the high-end retail market, store renovations along Rodeo Drive that are driving more sales and Chanel's specific goals for its Rodeo Drive presence.

Chanel also owns another store next door and the company wanted to own both structures, "ultimately to tie them together in some fashion," Kalt said.

Chanel bought the store it was leasing from a partnership of two families that had owned the property since the late 1980s, he said.

The prior record price for retail space on Rodeo Drive was set in 2013 when LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton bought its 7,100-square-foot property for $85 million, or $11,971 per square foot, the law firm said.

Rodeo Drive ranks second among the most expensive U.S. retail streets, trailing only upper Fifth Avenue in New York, the commercial brokerage Cushman & Wakefield said in a report last month.