Randy Starr has been called the King of Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. But it’s not why you think.
Starr, the 47-year-old founder of commercial real estate brokerage Starrpoint Commercial Partners, has completed more than 1,000 lease deals in the Third Street area over his 24-year career here. Surprisingly, these deals haven’t been with retailers, but rather with Westside tech companies, including employee-rewards website BetterWorks, app promotion tool Burstly.com and e-commerce site Beachmint Inc.
But when Starr founded his company on the Westside in the late 1980s, few firms found Third Street attractive. It hadn’t yet been through its retail renaissance and the available office space was more industrial, lacking the pristine finishes and amenities of Beverly Hills and Century City.
But Starr saw something in the neighborhood when he moved from New York in 1988 that made him think there was potential.
“It had all the feel of a mini-Manhattan, except by the beach,” he said.
Then, when the first tech boom started later in the 1990s, he began getting requests from tech companies. The industrial feel became desirable and amenities had improved. He leased several thousand square feet near or on Third to social networking site Myspace Inc. and online content provider Demand Media Inc., and watched them grow.
Today, he’s witnessing another tech explosion. He is seeing demand for creative space in Santa Monica shoot through the roof. He’s helping companies, including Beachmint and Burstly, relocate into larger offices. These companies like the area because it is pedestrian oriented with strong amenities and similar companies.
Starr thinks there’s something different about the growth of the tech industry this time around, as the new executives learn from the mistakes of the past.
“Unlike the previous tech boom, the upper echelon of many of these companies now seem to focus more on becoming profitable rather than simply mapping out the quickest path to an IPO,” he said.
He thinks this means the latest tech boom will last longer.
“We are in the third or fourth inning of what I feel and hope will be a very long ballgame that will go into extra innings,” he said.
But even if there’s another bust, Starr’s got more than just his job cooking. In his free time, he’s an amateur chef, cooking beef Wellington, cedar plank-smoked wild salmon or penne arrabiatta for his daughters.
“I have a passion for gourmet cooking and if I had not carved out a successful career in commercial real estate, I would have aspired to be a world-class chef,” he said.
– Jacquelyn Ryan
