Google Leases Former Westside Pavilion Property For New Campus
WEST LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – Google has signed a 14-year lease on a 584,000-square-foot property in West L.A. that will be a new campus for the tech giant.
The property, which used to be part of the Westside Pavilion shopping mall, will serve as a creative office campus for Google known as One Westside, according to a press release Tuesday from co-owners Hudson Pacific Properties and Macerich.
"Google's been a proud member of the Los Angeles community since 2003," said RG Kahoe, Google Real Estate Project Executive in a statement. "We're excited to continue investing in the community as part of Hudson Pacific and Macerich's adaptive reuse project at One Westside."
Construction will begin this year and is expected to be completed by 2022, at which point the lease will take effect. The campus will have an open-space layout with terraces, patios, a rooftop garden deck, and a bridge to the adjacent Landmark Theatre. It is being designed by architecture firm Gensler. It's unclear exactly how many people the campus will employ.
The mall has been failing over the past few years and lost anchor stores such as Macy's and Nordstrom. The remaining stores at the mall will close by the end of January. However, the Landmark Theatre will stay, along with some shops and restaurants on Pico Boulevard.
"Everyone knows going west of the 405 can be a slog if you don't live there already," an enthusiastic Mayor Eric Garcetti told CBS2 Tuesday. "To have some jobs now going east of the 405, a great, underutilized iconic location. And most importantly, it doubles down on our investments near transit."
UCLA assistant professor Dr. Sarah Roberts expressed her concerns over how the influx of tech companies could be having a negative effect on the demographics of the region.
"We've seen with the arrival of these companies in Venice and Playa del Rey and other areas on the far Westside, really, a transformation demographically and economically in those areas," Roberts said.
"There are long standing communities in place in those areas, particularly communities of color in L.A., particularly working class communities in some pockets of those areas that cannot withstand that changing demographic and the increases in property and rent that come with it," she added.
This comes after Apple announced last month that it plans to open new offices in Culver City as part of a nationwide expansion.