BuzzFeed will not be moving into Shorenstein Properties’ Ford Motor Factory Building after all.
After months of discussion regarding the New York media and entertainment firm taking more than 200,000 square feet at the 300,000-square-foot building at 2060 E. Seventh St. in downtown L.A.’s Arts District, the deal did not close and both sides walked away. Both Shorenstein and BuzzFeed declined to comment on why the deal is dead.
BuzzFeed, which recently received a $200 million investment from NBCUniversal that valued the firm at roughly $1.5 billion, is still looking for a space that will suit the company’s planned expansion in Los Angeles.
Meantime, employees in BuzzFeed’s video department, dubbed BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, will relocate from the 40,000 square feet the company takes at Kilroy Realty Corp.’s campus on De Longpre Avenue across from the ArcLight Cinema complex, a BuzzFeed spokeswoman said.
Starting in mid-October, the roughly 230 employees comprising BuzzFeed’s editorial video team in Los Angeles will occupy the entirety of Siren Studios’ roughly 52,000-square-foot media campus at 6063 W. Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, the spokeswoman said. BuzzFeed and Siren Studios declined to comment on the terms of the deal.
Though the deal with Shorenstein has fallen out, BuzzFeed is still said to be in the market for a substantial amount of space, and there are few large properties able to accommodate it. Among the potential options are the Pen Factory in Santa Monica, the Brickyard in Playa Vista and the Pacific Design Center’s Red Building in West Hollywood. The Colorado Center in Santa Monica is also an option now that Riot Games and Yahoo Inc. have moved out.
Until a space is found that is large enough for the planned expansion of the company and, possibly, a consolidation of its four local offices, the other three BuzzFeed offices in Los Angeles will not move, the spokeswoman said.
The company takes 22,000 square feet of office space at Kilroy’s Sunset Media Center at 6255 W. Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood for its branded content department. The company’s editorial office is on 7323 Beverly Blvd. in L.A.’s Fairfax District. BuzzFeed’s sales team also takes 1,900 square feet in a single-tenant office building at 608 Main St. in Venice.
Once BuzzFeed’s video department exits, Kilroy will begin redeveloping the De Longpre site, dubbed the Academy, into a 260,000-square-foot mixed-use creative office campus. The project will include a high-rise residential tower with roughly 200 units, roughly 20,000 square feet of retail and low-rise creative office buildings, said David Simon, executive vice president at Kilroy.
The project, which will break ground in the first quarter of 2016, will be modeled after Kilroy’s Columbia Square project.
