Sears store and warehouse in Boyle Heights sold

Sears store and warehouse in Boyle Heights by Ed Fuentes.

The Sears building on East Olympic Boulevard has been a visual landmark on the Eastside skyline since the 1920s. The mail order-fulfillment center and warehouse housed in the building for decades is long closed, but the Sears department store on the ground floor remains busy. From the LA Business Journal:

After more than six years of headaches and false starts, Santa Monica real estate company MJW Investments finally sold the historic Sears Roebuck & Co. tower in Boyle Heights.

Downtown L.A. multi-family real estate developer Izek Shomof bought the 23-acre property at 2650 E. Olympic Blvd. for $29 million in a sale that closed escrow Tuesday.

MJW, which acquired the property for $32.1 million in 2004, had planned a $500 million redevelopment project for the property that would bring hundreds of condos and apartments, as well as more than 700,000 square feet of retail space to the area....

MJW first put the property on the market in 2007 when the real estate market began to take a turn for the worse. L.A. boxing champion Oscar De La Hoya’s real estate company, Golden Boy Partners, agreed to buy the property for as much as $70 million, but later backed out of the deal.

Other previous sales also fell out of escrow.