Brokerage Sold on Bigger Downtown L.A. Presence

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St. Louis brokerage Cassidy Turley Inc., which opened its first L.A. office only nine months ago, has signed a lease to move its regional offices into bigger space in downtown’s City National Plaza at 555 S. Flower St.

The firm signed a five-year lease for 10,875 square feet with landlord Thomas Properties Group Inc. this month. Financial terms were not disclosed, but industry sources estimate the value at $2.1 million.

Cassidy Turley will occupy half of the 44th floor with the option to expand across the full floor in the future. It will receive signage on the building.

It plans to move in April 1.

The company has been housed at 333 S. Hope St., in a sublease from law firm Brown White & Newhouse LLP. It has expanded three times in the space as it has grown to 25 employees from five at its opening.

Jonathan Larsen, regional managing principal at Cassidy Turley, said the new space allows the company to continue to grow.

“It’s a good central location amongst a lot of exciting things going on downtown,” he said.

The company plans to continue to expand with new offices in the San Fernando Valley, the Westside and Orange County in the coming year.

Lalo Diaz represented Thomas in-house. Larsen and colleague Suzanne Lee represented the tenant.

New Offering

West L.A.’s Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. last week announced that it would be offering 8 million shares of common stock priced at $21.50.

The price is a slight discount to the company’s market stock value, which closed at $22.11 on Feb. 6, the day before the offering price was announced.

The offering is expected to close Feb. 12.

The company intends to raise $165 million in the deal. It could raise up to $190 million if underwriters take advantage of a 30-day option to purchase up to 1.2 million additional shares at a discounted offering price.

The company said it would use the proceeds to fund development and redevelopment projects, new acquisitions and to pay down debt.

Hudson Pacific has built a 5.4 million-square-foot portfolio of entertainment- and tech-related properties from San Francisco to San Diego since it went public in 2010. Among the notable properties in its portfolio are the Sunset Gower Studios and Sunset Bronson Studios, totaling about 900,000 square feet in Hollywood.

It also owns undeveloped land across the state that can support up to 2 million square feet of new development.

Among the development projects in its pipeline is a 12-acre West L.A. property known as the Olympic-Bundy campus that it bought in September for $89 million. The property comprises four buildings totaling about 233,600 square feet, two-thirds of which is leased through May to online advertising technology company Rubicon Project. Hudson is planning to renovate the rest of the property into Class A creative office by next year.

No one from the company was available to comment.

Bakery Chambers

Panera Bread Co. bakery and café has begun renovations at the former headquarters of the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau, its newest Beverly Hills location.

The St. Louis bakery company signed a 10-year lease last year with the city for nearly all of the 7,500-square-foot property at 239 S. Beverly Drive. The lease was extended by one year last month. The rental rate is about $24,000 a month. (AT&T leases a 182-square-foot space for a communications facility on the second floor.)

Panera plans to open the location in about six months after completing the renovations, which include removing asbestos and lead hazards, and adding a kitchen. The city contributed $400,560 to renovation costs.

The chamber and bureau both moved to newer offices, which also include a visitors center, at 9400 S. Santa Monica Blvd. last year.

The city announced it planned to build a new parking structure at the Beverly Drive site but abandoned those plans for the next several years after a study showed it would have to acquire adjacent properties to do so.

Staff reporter Jacquelyn Ryan can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 228.