Honest Co., in Expansion Mode, Will Move to Playa Vista

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Honest Co., having signed a lease for more than 80,000 square feet in Playa Vista, will relocate from Santa Monica early next year.

The ecommerce company, which sells eco-friendly baby- and body-care products and non-toxic cleaning products, was co-founded by actress Jessica Alba and L.A. entrepreneur Brian Lee. It has agreed to take 83,000 square on the top three floors of 12130 Millennium Drive, nearly tripling its existing space.

The move was confirmed by Craig Gatarz, Honest Co.’s executive vice president, who said the move would allow the company the space it needed to expand its headcount across all departments.

“How many employees will be hired remains to be seen,” Gatarz said. “But 83,000 square feet gives us a lot of room for growth and we are hiring across the board in all areas of the company.”

The retailer, which has raised more than $120 million in venture capital and has a valuation of around $1 billion, will move from its headquarters at 2700 Pennsylvania Ave. in Santa Monica, where it takes only about 30,000 square feet. Honest sealed the deal last week, signing an 11-year lease with New York real estate firm Clarion Partners. The deal could be valued at $49.3 million, according to sources’ estimates of rent at the property.

Honest Co. will be moving to the two-building, 300,000-square-foot Class A office complex known as i|o at Playa Vista, which stands for “indoor, outdoor.” Dallas real estate firm Lincoln Property Co. developed the property in 2010 and sold the then-vacant property to Clarion for $133 million in 2014. Lincoln stayed on as property manager, construction manager and leasing agent.

Clarion renovated the complex, remaking its 1-acre courtyard into a communal outdoor space, adding interconnecting staircases and a building a 12,000-square-foot roof deck. The roof deck was designed to meet Honest Co.’s needs and was built during the lease negotiations, said Khalid Rashid, a Clarion vice president.

With the Honest Co. lease the campus is roughly 70 percent occupied. The property is also home to the offices of multichannel network Fullscreen, New York media investment firm GroupM and offices of Santa Monica’s Chernin Group.

David Toomey and Matthew Miller of Cresa Los Angeles and Marc Bretter Travers Cresa represented Honest Co. Rick Buckley of L.A. Realty Partners and Kent Handleman of Lincoln Property Co. represented Clarion in the lease transaction.

Toomey said Honest Co. toured spaces in Santa Monica, Culver City and Playa Vista as part of its search.

“We were excited to find space to grow into and we also feel like we are moving into the nexus of what’s happening in the tech space,” Gatarz said. “With an indoor outdoor space, we feel we will be able to build a space unlike anything else in Los Angeles.”

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