About a third of the parties offering to buy historic former Caltrans-owned houses in South Pasadena have dropped out of the bidding. Only one of those remaining is looking to buy all five properties, Evanna Holdings Inc., owned by a major distributor of e-cigarettes and other vaping products.
The remaining 30 bidders—a mix of individuals, trusts and limited liability firms—are listed as negotiating parties on the South Pasadena City Council’s closed session agenda for Wednesday Nov. 20. That’s down from the nearly 50 bidders previously presented to the Council after bidding closed on the properties Oct. 25.
The five parcels up for sale are all historic, vacant houses in need of renovation on Fremont Ave, Fairview Ave, Meridian Ave or Hope Street.
The properties, all within Caltrans’ failed SR-710 extension corridor, are being sold to the city at the price Caltrans originally paid for them in the 1960s and 1970s. Under the authorizing legislation, the city is required to use proceeds from the sales of the historic properties to create three affordable housing units for each historic unit sold.
After bidding on the five historic properties closed Oct. 25, the city reported 64 offers from approximately 47 bidders. Only one, Evanna Holdings LLC, made offers on all five properties, while three–All American Trust Inc., Eanovation Inc., and Hongming Jin–each bid on three. Eight bidders made offers on two.
But when the new list came out Thursday, only 30 bidders remained. There was no explanation for why some dropped out, but other changes were apparent. All bids from All American Trust and Eanovation were gone, as was Hongming Jin’s bid for Hope Street. All double-bidders disappeared except Soheil Darvish, who’s still angling for 216 Fairview and 1707 Meridian.
Hongming Jin is a California-licensed contractor and CEO of South Pasadena-based Yigong Construction, which was registered with the state in 2020. Soheil Darvish is listed on LinkedIn as an independent real estate investor and developer “with expertise in the acquisition of value-added and opportunistic commercial real estate in New York city.”
All Evanna Holdings’ bids remain. Evanna Holdings, an investment company and its two real estate holding affiliates, are controlled by Eduard Kirakosyan and his wife, Ani Aghazaryan. Kirakosyan is the owner executive of a number of e-cigarette and vaping product companies, including Daddy’s Vapor Distro, of which he is listed as sole stockholder and CEO.
In a March, 2022 letter to Kirakosyan, New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. said Daddy’s Vapor marketing materials and brands “appear to blatantly target a young audience,” quoted research saying e-cigarettes like Daddy’s Vapor’s deliver “substantially more nicotine to the blood per puff than cigarettes or previous generation e-cigarettes” and that Daddy’s Vapor “appears to have been intentionally skirting regulatory authority by using synthetic nicotine instead of tobacco-derived nicotine.”
After a wrenching discussion in April 2022, the city council rejected a public safety commission recommendation to ban tobacco product sales, including e-cigarettes, in South Pasadena.
Per the Council’s agenda, there are still nine bidders competing for 1216 Fairview; eight for 217 Fremont; five for 225 Fremont; four for 1707 Meridian; and ten for the Hope Street parcel, which actually includes three addresses–a duplex on the corner of Hope St. and Meridian and a small detached house in back on Hope St.
Meantime several dozen non-historic former Caltrans properties in town await authorization from the California Transportation Commission for sale to city which, as with the historic houses, will in turn resell them to private buyers. The CTC is expected to approve a first tranche of the remaining properties by the end of the first quarter of next year, according to Alison Becker, the city’s Acting Community Development Director.
