Real Office Centers and its co-working tenants at a Santa Monica building received an eviction notice on May 22 from the property’s landlord, Hudson Pacific Properties Inc., a culmination of three years of ill will between the landlord and tenant.
The action against Newport Beach-based ROC, which Hudson Pacific said had not paid rent for April and May, from 604 Arizona Ave. came without advance notice, according to an email from ROC to its tenants. Hudson Pacific disputed that characterization, saying the co-working business knew of a coming court date to settle overdue payment issues.
“It didn’t happen overnight,” Mark Lammas, chief financial officer of Hudson Pacific, said last week. “They knew the court date was coming in 30 days.”
Hudson Pacific said in a letter to the tenants that they would be allowed to collect their things until 5 p.m. on May 31. The company said all co-working membership agreements were the responsibility of ROC.
However, ROC said in its email that Hudson Pacific was now responsible for the agreements. A receptionist at its Newport Beach headquarters said last week the company had no comment on the termination of its lease.
ROC pulled out of a 15-year lease for 27,000 square feet at Atlas Capital Group’s Row DTLA in downtown’s Industrial District in March. That space was partially built out.
When the co-working firm broke its lease at its downtown location, Chief Executive Ron McElroy called the situation a hiccup and said the business was committed to the L.A. area.
“We had a bit of a glitch with the landlord and we couldn’t resolve our differences,” he said at the time.
The company still has a co-working office on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, but no accommodations have been made to help resettle about 50 businesses displaced by its Arizona eviction, tenant Kevan Rayden, co-founder and president of SwipeMarket, said last week. His seven-person video production company had a $4,500-a-month lease at the Arizona location.
“I’ve tried to call them multiple times. They are not calling back,” Rayden said. “I had a production scheduled today that had to be canceled. I had to send all my employees home and I don’t know what do with them.”
The disputes between Brentwood-based Hudson Pacific and ROC, which had been a tenant in the Arizona building since 2012, date to at least 2014.
The landlord filed four eviction notices against the company that year, including two in one month, and went to court to repossess the property. The landlord claimed then that ROC was behind on its rent and had misused its three-story, 44,000-square-foot facility by throwing parties on the third-floor patio.
