Law Firm Makes a Case for Remaining Downtown

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Law Firm Makes a Case for Remaining Downtown
New housing near USC.

Legal giant Holland & Knight LLP has chosen to keep its L.A. offices downtown, signing a seven-year, 42,000-square-foot lease at the Mellon Bank Center.

The $10.4 million lease at 400 S. Hope St., signed last month with landlord Tishman Speyer Properties, is for roughly 26 percent less space than the firm’s existing quarters at the U.S. Bank Tower, 633 W. Fifth St.

But Holland & Knight is not cutting its roster of 80 attorneys and staff; rather, the Tampa, Fla.-based firm is taking advantage of the larger floor plans at the Mellon Bank Center to consolidate from three floors to two.

Jonathan Larsen, executive managing director for Houston-based Transwestern Commercial Services LLC, which represented Holland & Knight, said most of the space savings will come from eliminating duplicative kitchens, supply rooms and the like. The law firm is expected to relocate in mid-April.

“This move … will allow for growth in our office and on the West Coast,” said Jerry Levine, Holland & Knight’s L.A. executive partner.

Larsen said that as its lease with U.S. Bank Tower landlord MPG Office Trust Inc. was running out, Holland & Knight considered renewing it.

“They definitely wanted to remain downtown,” he said.

He added that Holland & Knight’s move is in keeping with a recent trend of law firms consolidating offices there. Recently, Boston-based Goodwin Proctor LLC closed its Century City office and consolidated staff to its downtown office.

Tishman Speyer, based in New York, was represented in-house by John Ollen, managing director of leasing, who could not be reached last week for comment.

Spiffy Student Housing

It’s not the student housing you remember.

Last month, developer Icon Co. and student housing specialist Campus Acquisitions LLC broke ground on a $33 million, 56-unit housing project on Figueroa Street across from USC.

The market-rate apartment project, which is completely privately funded and not directly affiliated with the university, is slated to open for fall semester 2012. It will feature 12,000 square feet of food service and related retail space on the ground floor, and will include a pool, recreation area, two rooftop decks and a cascading waterfall.

“We’re calling it an intimate project with full amenities,” said Eran Fields, Icon principal. “You could call it upscale.”

Icon, which has developed student housing near University of California, Santa Barbara, and California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, purchased the property in early 2008 from the operator of a Chevron gas station. The company, with its partner, Chicago-based Campus Acquisitions, spent most of the last three years securing necessary entitlements. A construction loan was obtained from Chicago-based Private Bankcorp Inc. and mezzanine financing from Wrightwood Capital LLC, which has offices in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Fields said the project is aimed at the general USC student population, though he thinks undergraduates would be most likely to use it.

“It’s an absolutely prime location, right across from one of the main entrances to the USC campus,” he said.

The Icon project is only the latest of several student housing projects that have opened or are in planning stages around USC, which has faced a chronic housing shortage. The much larger 420-unit University Gateway project recently opened one block away. Rents there start at $950 per month.

Hollywood Lease-Up

LeFrak Organization has leased up a vacant 12-story office building it purchased more than three years ago in the heart of Hollywood, announcing this month that it has signed Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar to a 10-year, $3.4 million lease.

LeFrak, a New York-based family real estate and investment firm, purchased the 176,000-square-foot tower at 7060 Hollywood Blvd. for $50 million in August 2007. It is co-owned by Beverly Hills real estate investment firm Kennedy Wilson Inc.

LeFrak spent 18 months and nearly $20 million gutting, renovating and repositioning the building as Class A office space. By the time the building was ready to lease in mid-2009, the financial crisis had hit, complicating efforts to fill the space.

Yet within months, LeFrak, through leasing agent Rick Buckley of L.A. Realty Partners, signed concert promoter and venue operator Live Nation Entertainment Inc. to a 15-year lease valued at $80 million for 100,000 square feet, or seven full floors. When combined with an eight-year deal with Hollywood PR firm ID Public Relations for the lease of a full floor, the building was 80 percent leased by late 2009. The lease with the Minneapolis-based restaurant chain takes up the remaining 7,249 square feet in the building.

Bryan Norcott of Studley Inc. represented the restaurant in the deal.

Howard Fine can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 227.

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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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