DTLA’s co-working craze has claimed another office space.
Shared workspace provider Real Office Centers has inked a 15-year lease for 27,000 square feet at ROW DTLA, located at 777 South Alameda Street in the Arts District, The Real Deal has learned.
The location will be ROC’s first in Downtown Los Angeles. The company has several others in Santa Monica, San Diego, Orange County, and Honolulu.
ROC was represented by Jim Travers and Chris O’Connor of Cresa, while the ownership was represented by Andrew Jennison, Jim Jacobsen, Carl Pierose and Scott Rigsby of Industry Partners.
ROW, developed by Atlas Capital Group and Square Mile Capital Management in partnership with USAA Real Estate Company, is currently the largest adaptive re-use project in Los Angeles and comprises the transformation of six structures originally built by the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1920s into loft-style workspaces. Asking rents at the complex were not immediately available.
The project also includes a massive retail component. Furnishings store A+R is slated to open there in the fall. Brooklyn-based Smorgasburg opened a weekly Sunday mega-market for food last month, to much fanfare.
“ROC’s decision to open at ROW DTLA underscores the continued expansion of L.A.’s creative workforce to Downtown L.A. and the Eastside,” Jennison said.
Increased demand for office space from creative and co-working tenants such as WeWork, Industrious and ROC has been driving down office vacancy in DTLA, TRD previously reported.
“Though many market observers and participants tend to hold overly bullish or overly bearish opinions about the concept of co-working, the one undeniable truth is that co-working companies are accounting for an ever-increasing chunk of net absorption and nowhere is this more true than in Downtown Los Angeles,” said an April report by CBRE.