LA's Next Biggest Creative Office Market Is...

With Playa Vista running out of room and Santa Monica prices out of control, creative office tenants need an outlet. Hollywood is looking to fill the void. 

There's a ton of new creative office space under construction in the surging market, and one project has already signed a big-time tenant. JH Snyder's long-awaited creative office project at 959 Seward has inked a 10-year lease with Broad Green Pictures as its first tenant, grabbing 36k SF. JH Snyder SVP Kacy Keys (here with Kilroy EVP David Simon) says the 245k SF project is attractive to workers who just don't want to deal with Santa Monica traffic unless they live there.

Kacy told the more than 300 attendees at Bisnow's Future of Hollywood last week the $140M project should be complete in August, more than seven years after getting entitlements. Meanwhile, Hudson Pacific also is progressing on its $150M creative office tower at the Sunset Bronson Studios campus. The project will include 323k SF of office space, in addition to a 90k SF production building. The panel was moderated by JLL's Carl Muhlstein, who pointed out that Hudson has become much more of a NorCal landlord after its recent 8.2M SF portfolio buy.

Hudson EVP Chris Barton (here with David) says his firm would love to get its hands on more in the hot market and is actively shopping. He says Class-A vacancy in Hollywood is less than 10%, and there is a ton of pent-up demand to absorb new development.