Title: Executive managing director
Company: Jones Lang LaSalle
Project: Represented Boston Consulting Group in a 50,000-square-foot lease at 515 S. Flower St.
What brought you to this project?
JLL was invited to make a presentation to Boston Consulting Group for the assignment of finding office space that implements BCG’s vision of having its Los Angeles office be a creative, collaborative workspace in an environment that best suits its employees and clients.
What projects/deals prepared you to take this particular one and why?
Our team’s creativeness and experience, along with the client’s vision, pushed us to think outside the box by identifying the best institutional landlords to create this vision that BCG outlined for their workplace. Our team found one owner, Commonwealth Partners, who shared BCG’s vision to activate traditional office space into a more creative environment
by agreeing to redevelop the top two floors of a building, one of which had previously been used as storage space, into creative office space for BCG.
What sets this project/deal apart from others in downtown?
BCG had a unique but succinct vision for their workplace in that they were a traditional service/consulting firm wanting to create a collaborative workspace for their employees, preferably in an urban environment, while maintaining its core firm values. We ended up finding space that helped them promote the values of the firm in what is probably the most unique space in a high-rise in all of Southern California. What has transpired here was by no means an accident, but it is no less astonishing what DTLA has become. And with the pending completion of Metro’s Regional Connector and the delivery of all these amazing projects under construction, it remains as hard today as it was in the beginning to fathom how great DTLA will ultimately become.
What are your biggest challenges with this property?
The biggest challenge was finding 50,000 square feet of high-rise space in downtown Los Angeles that could be redeveloped into creative space. JLL’s team was able to negotiate a plan of turning shell space into a functional, efficient office that contained an open-air terrace on the 51st floor of a high-rise, the first ever skylight on a high-rise in downtown Los Angeles, and mezzanine space that optimizes the 30-foot or 24-foot ceiling heights of the floors leased.
What impacts will this project have on downtown?
Creative office space continues to evolve in Los Angeles, with much of the evolution happening in West Los Angeles. However, we think BCG’s new space at 515 S. Flower St. is a case study of how there are infinite workplace possibilities when you have a client with a great vision for space and passion for their people, an open-minded developer such as we found in Commonwealth Partners and the success we had by utilizing JLL’s full-service real estate team to execute for our client.
