Beverly Hills Renames Industrial Zone to Attract Media Business

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An industrial zone in Beverly Hills?


That’s right, for decades, the city with glitzy retail shops on Rodeo Drive and gleaming office towers along Wilshire Boulevard also has had an industrial district.


But the 43-acre zone just east of City Hall has never really been a true industrial area. At one time, it may have had a few light-industrial companies; today, it’s mostly a hodge-podge of entertainment-related office tenants and city-owned facilities. AOL, a division of Time Warner Inc. has offices there, as does News Corp.’s Fox Entertainment.


And now, the industrial zone designation itself is history. With major portions of the zone now empty or slated for redevelopment, city officials want to attract more hip entertainment and new media companies. They have renamed it the “entertainment business district.”


“It’s an edgy area that we think might appeal to entertainment-related businesses, and that’s where we want to target the new private development,” Deputy City Manager David Lightner said in a press briefing last week called to draw attention to the name change for the often-overlooked area.


One big selling point: the lease rates are likely to be cheaper than they are at more visible, prime locations within the city’s “Golden Triangle” or along Wilshire Boulevard.


Tucked away between City Hall on the west, Santa Monica Boulevard on the north, Maple Drive on the east and Third Street on the south, the “former industrial area” is now in the midst of sweeping changes. A trash transfer station and city-owned warehouse facilities were heavily damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake and have been torn down, leaving several acres of open space immediately across from City Hall.


On the eastern side, city officials have put out a long-term plan to replace property uses such as city storage yards with higher revenue generators, including Class A office space with ground floor restaurants and retail.


Plans also call for changing the city’s general plan to raise height limits from the current 45 feet to 75 feet. That would provide enough space so that major entertainment firms won’t have to leave the city once they outgrow their current offices, as the Creative Artists Agency did a couple years back.


The big catch in all these plans? As usual for development on the Westside, it’s traffic. The area is bounded by residents on three sides who likely won’t want cars going through their neighborhoods to and from any trendy spots or employment centers.


As such, preliminary plans call for improved access on streets within the district, but with barriers so that cars won’t go into adjoining residential neighborhoods.

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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