Buzzfeed, a New York media and entertainment company, has moved some of its employees into the Sunset Media Center in Hollywood as it expands its L.A. team.
Robert Caviola, a managing director in the downtown L.A. office of Savills Studley who represented Buzzfeed in the transaction, said the firm is taking 22,000 square feet of office space at the center, at 6255 W. Sunset Blvd., but would not comment on terms of the lease.
West L.A. real estate company Kilroy Realty Corp. bought the Sunset Media Center for $76 million in 2012, and David Simon, its executive vice president, said the length of Buzzfeed’s lease is five years or less.
Monthly asking rents at the building are $4.05 a square foot, according to data provided by CoStar Group Inc., valuing the deal at more than $1 million a year.
Kilroy renovated the 321,883-square-foot, 22-story Class A office building in 2014 to fit the needs of technology and entertainment companies, Simon said.
Buzzfeed has two other offices in Los Angeles, including space in Kilroy’s 475,000-square-foot creative mixed-used office campus on De Longpre Avenue across from the ArcLight Cinema complex.
Buzzfeed takes 40,000 square feet at that campus for its video department, dubbed Buzzfeed Motion Pictures, Caviola said. The company’s editorial office is on 7323 Beverly Blvd. in L.A.’s Fairfax District.
The Sunset Media Center lease may only be temporary, sources said, as Buzzfeed is in the market for a much larger space that could consolidate its three local offices.
Sources in the real estate industry said one potential location that would meet that space requirement, about 200,000 square feet, is the 300,000-square-foot former Ford Motor Factory Building, which San Francisco real estate firm Shorenstein Properties purchased last year for $37 million. Shorenstein is converting the building, at 2060 E. Seventh St. in downtown L.A.’s Arts District, into creative office space and expects it to be completed next year.
Caviola, who is also representing Buzzfeed in its search for a larger space, declined to comment on the hunt.
