Leases Hit the Highs of Dot-Com Days

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Fox Interactive Media and Edmunds.com Inc. are inking large Westside leases at some of the highest rents since the dot-com days.


Fox Interactive Media, a division of media giant News Corp., is negotiating to lease a 165,000-square-foot prime Beverly Hills office building at 407 N. Maple Drive, according to sources.


Terms were still being negotiated last week, but assuming a standard 10-year lease and Beverly Hills asking rents of $3.25 a foot, the lease could be worth nearly $65 million to Tishman Speyer Properties LP, the building’s owner.


Fox was represented by Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s Andy Feola, and Tishman was represented internally by John Ollen. Both Feola and Ollen declined to comment.


Tishman recently bought the vacant office building for $71 million from a partnership made up of health care magnate Dr. Bernard Salick and entertainment mogul David Geffen. The building sat empty for two years while the partners unsuccessfully sought permission from the Beverly Hills City Council to convert it to a cardiac care center.


When the council vetoed the change of use, Geffen and Salick decided to sell the building.


News Corp. has been increasingly focusing on Web operations, with the company earlier this year agreeing to buy Intermix Media Inc. formerly eUniverse for about $580 million.


The Beverly Hills location will serve as Fox Interactive Media’s headquarters. Fox had been negotiating a lease with similar terms at the Water Garden office complex in Santa Monica, but that deal fell through when Edmunds.com a publisher of auto buying guides agreed to take the space for $3.40 a foot.


At that rent, which sets a new high-water mark for the office complex, Edmunds.com’s 106,000-square-foot, 10-year lease is worth nearly $43.3 million. Pension funds managed by JPMorgan own the Water Garden.


Edmunds.com, which is moving from the Colorado Center, was represented by Travers Realty Co. LLC’s James N. Travers and Steven N. Eyler and Trammell Crow Co.’s Bob Pearson represented the Water Garden.

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