Overview:
The Chapala Street office was once a tire dealership and the West Cota Street site was formerly home to a blacksmith and welding shop.
Two distinctive downtown buildings that were formerly occupied by a PayPal subsidiary have been sold for more than $11.5 million, the seller’s real estate agency reported Wednesday.
Paypal Honey, which offers automated coupons to consumers, had offices in both. One is at 530 Chapala St. and the other at 25 W. Cota St., said Hayes Commercial Group, which represented the seller.
Neither the identity of the seller nor the buyers were disclosed. Hayes Commercial said the deal was only one of three commercial real estate transactions on the Central Coast to exceed $10 million last year.
The Chapala property is described as an “iconic Spanish Revival building” that was once a Dal Pozzo Tires dealership, the real estate brokers said in announcing the sale. By contrast, the three-story Cota building is a “classic warehouse structure dating to 1915,” the former home of a blacksmith and welding shop. One of its more distinctive features is a rooftop patio.
Both buildings had been renovated in 2017 for their role as swanky corporate offices. They were modern and up-to-date inside while retaining their historic facades outside.
“Well-located, high-caliber commercial assets in downtown Santa Barbara never go out of style,” said Kristopher Roth a principal at Hayes Commercial Group. “Properties that offer this kind of quality, visibility, and long-term viability remain highly sought after.”
Roth and Caitlin Hensel handled the deal on behalf of the sellers.
Honey was founded as start-up Honey Science in 2012.
In 2019 San Jose-based PayPal announced it would acquire Honey Science for about $4 billion. At the time, Honey had about 17 million monthly users and was working in conjunction with about 30,000 participating online retailers selling everything from clothing to pizza.
Consumers were using Honey Science for its online coupon delivery service, a tool so effective that users were then racking up more than $1 billion in annual savings, PayPal said.
“Honey is amongst the most transformative acquisitions in PayPal’s history,” said Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal at the time when the company announced the acquisition.
Honey will “simplify the consumer shopping experience, while at the same time making it more affordable and rewarding,” he predicted.
