San Francisco’s Upload Inc. signs 20K lease in Marina del Rey

Upload Inc. — a San Francisco-based company that runs co-working space, events and educational programs for the virtual reality industry — has expanded to Los Angeles.

The company signed a lease for 20,000 square feet at 4505 Glencoe Avenue, a 45,000-square-foot building in the Marina Business Center, owned by Hankey Investment Company, property records show. Upload moved into the Marina del Rey office on January 15, marking its first entrance into the Southern California market.

“This expansion was a natural fit because of the audience potential available in the greater LA area,” Taylor Freeman, the co-founder and CEO of Upload, said in a statement. “Virtual reality and the entertainment industry are coming together, and this space will help to accelerate that partnership and collaboration.”

The building was fully vacant at the time the lease was signed. Now, it is 44 percent leased with 25,000 square feet available, CoStar shows.

Asking rent at the two-story building is $4.25 a square foot a month, CoStar shows. That would value the lease at just over $1 million a year.

CBRE’s Garrett Ellis and Carter Haslam represented the tenant, with the support of local market experts Jeff Pion and Shay Bolton. NGKF’s Christopher Strickfaden represented the landlord.

Upload was founded in 2014 by Freeman and William Mason as a meetup and events company for VR-obsessives and founders. In recent years, it has expanded to include Upload Collective, an incubator-style coworking space for companies in the VR world, located in San Francisco’s Mission District.

It also has an independent breaking news website, UploadVR, which covers the industry. The company announced Tuesday that Tal Blevins, the co-founder and former editor in chief of videogame news organization IGN, will head editorial efforts as Upload’s “head of media.”

Its L.A. office will serve as a co-working, training and incubation space, Haslam said.