Miracle Mile Office Project Gets a Haircut

Museum Square Phase II, as designed by the Jerde Partnership (Image: Showcase.com)

Plans for a new mid-rise office building are still forging ahead on the Miracle Mile, albeit now in slightly truncated form.  This coming Thursday, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission is scheduled to review phase two of Museum Square, a 7.5-acre office and retail complex located at 5757 Wilshire Boulevard.  The proposed expansion calls for the construction of a new 13-story tower, which would add 250,000 square feet of Class-A office space on a current parking lot at 620 S. Curson Avenue.

However, it appears that some minor changes have occurred since we last heard from the project.  According to an agenda for the upcoming meeting of the City Planning Commission, Snyder has scaled down the proposed building's height to approximately 173 feet.  Earlier designs from the Jerde Partnership featured a 207-foot tall structure, thanks to generous 14-foot ceilings.

Other aspects of the Museum Square expansion have also decreased in scale.  The original plan called for new levels atop an existing five-story parking structure, augmenting its total capacity to 2,040 vehicles.  Although the project will still entail the addition of two floors to the garage, total parking accommodations will expand to just 1,843 vehicle stalls.  The Museum Square complex will eventually be easily accessible via Metro Rail, with a location midway between future Purple Line stations at Fairfax and La Brea Avenues.

Although an exact timeline for the office tower has not been revealed, a report from this past March indicated that Snyder was in negotiations with two specialty tenants, both of whom wished to lease the entire building.  That prospective tenant would then commission its own architect to redesign the tower to best suit its needs.

Hollywood Office Campus Finally on its Way

959 Seward Street

It looks like a long stalled office development in Hollywood may get shovels in the ground soon.  Back in 2012, a representative from the J.H. Snyder Company told Businessweek that their project at 959 Seward Street was coming back to life.  Applications for construction permits have since been submitted to the Department of Building and Safety.  Here is what Snyder has in the works, according to the project's environmental impact report:

...construction of a 241,568 square foot entertainment campus including 237,568 square feet of office space and up to 4,000 square feet of employee commissary space.  The Proposed Project would provide valet surface parking and 735 parking spaces in an eight-level above ground parking structure.  The Proposed Project is designed to be an entertainment campus to cater primarily to entertainment-type users for offices, editing and post-production.  The project would be developed with three structures: "West Wing", "East Wing", and the parking structure.

The "West Wing," tops out at five floors and 76 feet above grade.  The "East Wing," would stand four floors and roughly 64 feet tall.  959 Seward's total area has been upped to 245,000 square feet according to the project's official website.

Snyder has enlisted architectural firm Jerde Partnership for the campus' design work.  The two companies have previously collaborated on a variety of projects including the Vermont Towers.  Check out some of Jerde's other renderings of 959 Seward:

View of the project site from Seward Street

Bird's eye view of the the "Event Garden"

Close up on the campus' Barton Avenue entrance

View of the project from Barton Avenue

Overhead map of the development

The current state of the project site.

And for some bonus eye candy, here is a video flyover of the project:

959 Hollywood video from Jones Lang LaSalle SW Region on Vimeo.

Plans for the office complex have been in the works since 2006, but the economic recession has delayed progress up until recently.  Businessweek noted that the project is being built "on a speculative basis," meaning that J.H. Snyder had yet to sign tenants as of August 2012.  The company expects Hollywood's allure and central location to steer potential lessees their way, especially since there is currently a dearth of Class-A office space in the neighborhood.

This certainly is a central location for the entertainment industry.  Several film and television institutions are located within a 1.5 mile radius of 959 Seward, including Paramount Studios.  Businesses specializing in film development, editing and preservation line the stretch of  Seward Street north of Melrose.

One of those businesses used to be Consolidated Film Industries (CFI), a film lab that called 959 Seward home until 2002.  When the land was to be sold in 2005, it turned out that decades of film processing chemicals had leaked into the soil below CFI's campus.  The site was required to undergo substantial soil remediation, with over 85,000 cubic feet of dirt removed from the lot and backfilled with crushed concrete.

An overhead view of 959 Seward from decades ago, when it was still home to Consolidated Film Industries.

In spite of mediocre vacancy rates throughout the city, J.H. Snyder seems to be quite bullish about the future of Los Angeles' office market.  In addition to 959 Seward, the company has two other large office developments set to start work in the near future.  The company recently agreed to take over development of 1601 Vine, an eight story, 114,000 square foot proposal near the Hollywood/Vine subway station.  The agreement stipulates that groundbreaking must take place by April of 2014.

1601 Vine

Snyder also has plans for a 13 floor, 250,000 square foot office building on the Miracle Mile.  The company informed the Park La Brea News that they tentatively hope to break ground on the Museum Square Office Tower in 2014.

Museum Square Office Tower

• 959 Seward (Official Website)
• Hollywood Seediness Fades as Developers Remake Media Hub (Businessweek)
• J.H. Snyder Co. Acquires Hollywood Property for Entertainment Industry Office Campus (Businesswire)