Guitar Equipment Maker Plugs Into More Space

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Guitar equipment manufacturer Line 6 Inc. has renewed and expanded its headquarters lease in Calabasas.

The company signed deals for a total of about 70,000 square feet at two buildings in the Calabasas Tech Center with landlord Hines of Houston last month. The company signed for 13,000 square feet of space at 26664 Agoura Road and extended the term on its existing 57,155-square-foot lease at 26580 Agoura, where it has been headquartered since 2006. The leases, which will expire in 2020, are valued at roughly $9 million.

Calabasas Tech Center is a seven-building complex spanning 281,707 square feet near the Ventura (101) Freeway.

Line 6 is expanding its business into the new space, where it will move some equipment it had stored at a Simi Valley warehouse. It plans next year to vacate the warehouse, which was a long drive for workers, said Andrew Lustgarten, corporate managing director in the downtown L.A. offices of Studley who represented the tenant.

He added that an eager landlord and ample space made the deal an easy decision.

“Hines was aggressive in economics,” he said. “They received cash concessions and some free rent. They felt like they were locking in at the bottom of the market.”

The landlord was represented in the transaction by Matt Heyn, David Solomon and Troy Pollet of CBRE Group Inc.

Avison Acquisition

Avison Young, a Toronto brokerage that opened its first L.A. office last year, acquired Santa Monica brokerage Starrpoint Commercial Partners Inc. last week.

Starrpoint, founded by star broker Randy Starr in the late 1980s, focuses on tech and media firms in the downtown Santa Monica market, mostly around the Third Street Promenade. Starr has handled more than 1,000 leases in the area in his 24-year career there. His clients include employee-rewards website BetterWorks, app promotion tool Burstly.com and e-commerce site Beachmint Inc.

In the merger, Starr became a principal at Avison Young and his office in Santa Monica was rebranded with the Canadian firm’s signage. This is Avison Young’s third L.A. location and second acquisition since opening in August of last year. It acquired L.A. brokerage Ramsey-Shilling Commercial Real Estate Inc. late last year.

Chris Cooper, managing director at Avison Young in Century City, said his firm was attracted to Starrpoint for its experience in Santa Monica, a leading Los Angeles County market.

“We are a perfect fit for one another,” Cooper said. “We provide Randy with an incredible national and international platform for his clients, and he helps us really establish an incredible strong foothold in the West L.A. market.”


Outclassed

The top 34 Class A buildings in the downtown L.A. and Century City markets, continued to outperform the rest of the L.A. market in rental rates last year, even while occupancies were lower.

The buildings established a 17.2 percent rental rate premium over other Class A properties, more than one point higher than a year earlier, according to a new report from Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

However, occupancy in those buildings is lower than other Class A buildings by 1.8 percentage points at only 82.3 percent, which would typically incentivize landlords to drop rents.

But Tony Morales, managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle, said outside forces are at work in each market.

In downtown, struggling MPG Office Trust Inc. owns about 55 percent of the vacant space and has declined to drop its rates. That has allowed other landlords to keep their rents up.

“When you have one owner that controls vacant space, there’s less reason to move the rates; it’s creating artificial stability in downtown L.A.,” he said.

Meanwhile, Century City is enjoying a boost from the strength of the broader Westside market, where space in the popular Santa Monica and Venice markets is nearly fully leased and pushing larger tenants toward the high-rise district. He noted that tech and entertainment tenants are becoming more prominent in Century City.

But he said that the properties being developed in the lower Westside area of Playa Vista, such as Ratkovich Co.’s Hercules Campus, where YouTube LLC has signed a lease, could begin to give Century City some competition.

“Time will tell as to how the new product on the lower Westside will appeal to users, but it has quite a bit of attraction,” he said.

Staff reporter Jacquelyn Ryan can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.

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