Rubicon Project is moving to Playa Vista from its West L.A. digs, the latest tech firm to head south to escape rising rents and limited space options.
The advertising technology company signed an eight-year deal for the entire 46,000-square-foot fourth floor at 12181 Bluff Creek Drive, part of landlord JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s two-building Playa Vista office complex. Rubicon is subleasing the space from Fox Interactive Media.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but brokers familiar with the market estimated rates of just more than $3 a square foot.
The move represents a growing trend of tech companies moving into Playa Vista, which already is home to video website YouTube LLC and devices maker Belkin International Inc., and will soon become the address for celebrity gossip website TMZ Productions Inc. and an office of software maker Microsoft Inc.
Rents discounted by as much as $2 from Westside submarkets such as Santa Monica, Venice and West Los Angeles, along with larger contiguous floor plans, have fed the rush to Playa Vista.
Dave Toomey, principal of Cresa Los Angeles who represented Rubicon, said the company was seeking affordable Westside space that would allow it to be on one floor.
“Playa Vista offers a good work environment and quality opportunities at attractive economics,” he said.
The new space includes a large balcony with views of the Santa Monica Mountains and Marina del Rey. Rubicon plans to move this spring.
The company occupies about 50,000 square feet in two buildings at 1925 and 1933 S. Bundy Drive in the Olympic Bundy Media Campus office complex. It moved into the 1925 building in 2007 during the company’s infancy and expanded into the second building after acquiring Fox Audience Network in 2010.
That office complex is slated for redevelopment as an 11-acre creative office campus, to be renamed Element LA Media Campus.
The new Playa Vista offices are part of a four-building complex developed by Lincoln Property Co. in the mid-2000s; it sold two of the buildings to JP Morgan in 2011. Fox Interactive Media signed a lease for 430,000 square feet in the buildings in 2008 to house its Myspace offices, but the social networking site began struggling and the company never moved in. Fox put all but one floor of its leased space on the market for sublease in 2009.
Fox subleased 33,000 square feet on the fifth floor of the 12181 Bluff Creek building last year to California Pizza Kitchen Inc.
Fox Interactive Media was represented by Eric Duncanson and Gideon Orion of Cushman & Wakefield Inc.
Brian Davies of Cresa also represented Rubicon.
Media Deals
Two new leases bring the occupancy of the Miracle Mile’s Wilshire Courtyard office building to 94 percent.
Katz Communications and E! Entertainment Network signed deals totaling nearly 75,000 square feet with landlord Tishman Speyer Properties LP of New York. Tishman purchased the 1 million-square-foot, two-building property last year for $423 million from Deutsche Bank’s RREEF in the county’s largest office sale in eight years. The complex is home to companies including Oprah Winfrey Network, Fox Animation and the Business Journal.
Katz, a subsidiary of New York’s Clear Channel Communications Inc., signed a 10-year lease for 45,500 square feet in the 5700 Wilshire Blvd. building in January. The New York-based firm represents thousands of radio stations, television and digital multicast stations and online publishers. It is moving from 6500 Wilshire Blvd.
E! Entertainment Network, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, inked a deal for a 28,124-square-foot expansion at the 5750 Wilshire building in the complex this month. The network produces, records and broadcasts dozens of radio and television shows.
“We have been very fortunate working with prominent media and entertainment industry tenants at our properties in Beverly Hills and we are off to a strong start at this property as well,” Mark Laderman, Tishman Speyer regional managing director, said in a statement.
Staff reporter Jacquelyn Ryan can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.
