Deal for Vivendi office tower first among local sales. (Up Front).

Vivendi Universal SA, as part of its ongoing debt-reduction efforts, has a deal to sell its 10 Universal City Plaza for about $190 million, according to sources familiar with the agreement.

After the deal closes later this month Vivendi will lease back about half the building from the buyer, a partnership of Beacon Capital Partners LLC and CarrAmerica Realty Corp.

The sale is the first among four properties Vivendi Universal put on the market in January. It is also marketing the 436-room Sheraton Universal Hotel, the land beneath the 486-room Hilton Universal City and a Lankershim Boulevard motel across the street from Universal Studios' western border.

Vivendi had been asking $42 million for the Sheraton, the San Fernando Valley's first high-rise hotel when built in 1964, according to Alan Reay, president of Costa Mesa-based Atlas Hospitality Group. Officials from Eastdil Realty, which has the listing on the hotels, did not return calls.

The sale is part of an $18.8 billion property disposition program that the Paris-based entertainment giant announced last year when Vivendi's debt reached dangerously high levels. With Jean-Rene Fourtou replacing Jean-Marie Messier as chairman and chief executive in July, the company undertook a plan to shed its non-core assets by the end of 2004.

Since last July, Vivendi has sold $8.7 billion in non-core assets worldwide, with more than $800 million sold in the first quarter, according to a March 28 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"We're always looking to divest in our noncore assets," said Cindy Gardner, spokeswoman for Vivendi, who declined to comment on the 10 Universal City Plaza sale process. "The motel property on Lankershim, the Universal building and the two hotels have been identified as non-core assets."

Within the past few years, Universal has sold the Geffen Records Building in West Hollywood, Hanna-Barbera Studios near Universal and the A&M Studios site on La Brea Avenue for about $45 million combined.

Vivendi also owns Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal CityWalk properties, which were assessed by the county at $1 billion in 2002. It also owns a number of properties on the Barham Boulevard side of Universal Studios, including a 75,000-square-foot office building at 1 Lakeside Plaza Dr.

It is not clear whether those properties would be put up for sale.

Beacon, which bought downtown L.A.'s 1.4 million-square-foot BP Plaza for about $270 million last year, will finance a majority of the 36-story tower purchase while CarrAmerica will handle the leasing, sources said.

Officials from Boston-based Beacon did not return calls while Maureen Wheeler, spokeswoman for Washington D.C.-based real estate investment trust Carr America, declined comment.

The 775,000-square-foot building is about 19 percent vacant, with rents in the $2.75 a foot range. Other tenants include Fireman's Fund, Sun Microsystems and Fedex Corp.

The 10 Universal City Plaza purchase represents an increasing local presence for Beacon. Besides BP Plaza, Beacon bought the 660,000-square-foot Trillium in Woodland Hills about two years ago. It is also under contract to sell the 465,000-square-foot Tower Burbank to Tishman Speyer for $115 million.

Carr America owns 14 L.A. County buildings totaling 550,000 square feet, the largest being the 145,000-square-foot building at 2600 W. Olive Ave. nearby.

Ten Universal City Plaza was developed by Universal Studios in 1985 in a 50-50 joint venture with Getty Oil, later purchased by Texaco Inc. Universal bought Texaco's share of the tower for about $70 million in 1997, four years before Vivendi bought Universal parent Seagram Co.

At $190 million, the tower will trade for about $245 a foot, about the same rate Tishman is paying for the Tower Burbank about a mile away.

The deal was first reported in newsletter Real Estate Alert.

Among the suitors the partnership beat out include New York-based Tishman Speyer Properties, Santa Monica-based Douglas Emmett & Co. and Phoenix-based Grossman Co. Properties, according to sources familiar with the deal.