Whoever wants Ronald Reagan’s space at Fox Plaza in Century City probably will pay significantly more than the ex-president did for the digs.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation’s lease is up this year and the Irvine Co., which owns the Westside landmark, is actively marketing the 14,000-square-foot space with full-page color newspaper ads and a Web site (foxplazapenthouse.com).
Westside real estate sources said the market could bring the Irvine Co. more than $77,000 per month, which would be almost four times the reported $18,000 that Reagan has been paying. No potential tenants’ names were floated.
Irvine Co. spokeswoman Jennifer Smith would not disclose terms of Reagan’s lease or the rate at which it is being marketed. Smith said the Foundation’s lease expires at the end of 2001, but it is willing to vacate if the landlord finds someone to take over the space.
Brokers who have seen the space said it is certainly quality class-A office space, but in no way extravagant.
“It’s OK,” said one source. “It’s nice, but it’s basic. It’s not overdone space.”
The current state of the space is irrelevant anyway, the source said. Any tenant improvements completed by the Foundation would be ripped out. The source said anyone willing to pay $77,000 per month is likely to want to customize the digs.
Whoever does sign up for the prime space on the 34th floor would likely be distracted not only by thoughts of the previous tenant, but by views of the Pacific Ocean, Santa Monica Mountains and Catalina Island.
Branded Living
Having established the DayRunner planner and the SENSA pen, Boyd Willat knows something about brands, but this time he’s shooting higher.
With his Siete Fuente luxury apartment complex on Harper Avenue in West Hollywood, Willat is trying to brand a lifestyle, recapture his family heritage and bring a modern version of 1920s and ’30s courtyard living back to the neighborhood.
“What we have here is our own little Andalusian town,” Willat said while walking a visitor through the project still months away from completion. “It’s a village.”
Siete Fuente is a $16 million, 20-unit apartment development situated among four courtyards. Two of the courtyards face landscaped areas, two face parking.
The one- to three-bedroom units average 1,500 square feet, and each comes with what the developer is calling a “media room.” The city of West Hollywood has outlawed home-based businesses, so Willat’s media rooms, which are wired with state-of-the-art technology and have entrances independent from the apartments’ front doors, are being pitched as dens or studies.
In addition, the arrangement of the units to incorporate the courtyards and public corridors will encourage, nay, mandate interaction.
“You’ll have no choice but to know your neighbors,” Willat said.
Now for the shocking part: Willat is hoping to get rents between $5,000 and $7,000 a month for the places.
He needs to charge that much because, at 20 units, Siete Fuente is half the density allowed by city code for the property. That’s also the project’s attraction.
“What really makes it is the massing and the social layout of the unit,” said Willat’s contractor, Timothy Lefevre, of Lefevre Corp. “The bones of it and guts of it are thought out in an interesting way.”
Along with his own entrepreneurial success, Willat comes from a famous Hollywood family that includes father, Irvin Willat, who founded Willat Studios in Culver City. In fact, the two-thirds of an acre on which Siete Fuente is rising is the same property where Willat the elder, who later became a real estate developer and built the first homes in Coldwater Canyon, raised the family.
A block or so south of Siete Fuente on Harper Avenue is Isola Bella, another Willat development. Willat built the 14-unit Isola Bella as condominiums in 1993, but the market wouldn’t support their sales, so he rented them. This summer, Willat plans to revert to the original plan and sell the 1,250-square-foot (average) units for between $350,000 and $400,000 apiece.
Your Name Here
Grubb & Ellis Co. is ready to go with its repositioning of the former AT & T; Center on Sixth Street in downtown Los Angeles.
Bill Atha, senior vice president and corporate account manager, said Grubb & Ellis is marketing 250,000 square feet of space in the 715,000-square-foot building, which has been renamed 611 Place since AT & T; bought out its lease and split last year, shortly after the New York family investment company Shetrit Group LLC bought the property.
AT & T;’s logo came down from the 42-story, class-B high-rise earlier this month and Atha said building-top signage is available for the right company. Atha is marketing the space with partner T.C. Macker, a senior associate with Grubb & Ellis.
Staff reporter Christopher Keough can be reached at (323) 549-5225 ext. 235 or at [email protected].
