Amid At Mateo shakeup, Soylent signs 29K sf lease

At Mateo
Renderings of the creative office portion of the At Mateo project at 555 Mateo Street in the Arts District. (Edge Architecture and Rios Clementi Hale Studios via Blatteis & Schnur)

UPDATED March 16, 4:05 p.m.: Who needs chewable food, anyway?

Never-leave-your-desk drink company Soylent has signed a 29,000 square foot lease in the $80 million At Mateo development at 555 Mateo Street. The lease closed amid a shakeup at Blatteis & Schnur and ASB Real Estate Investments’ development, The Real Deal has learned.  

Blake Mirkin led the team of CBRE brokers on the Soylent deal but the leasing team has since been replaced by a Cushman & Wakefield group led by Andrew Tashjian, sources said.

More than just the brokers changed at At Mateo. The ownership quietly changed the project mix to about 50 percent creative offices and 50 percent retail, sources said. Expected to open May 1, the project was originally slated to include 125,000 square feet of open-air retail space and only 50,000 square feet of offices.

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Soylent signed a headquarters lease in 2015 for 16,400 square feet of space at Broadway Media Center at 207 S. Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles. It is not known whether the company, led by Soylent-inventor Rob Rhinehart, plans to keep that space.

This story has been updated to reflect new information provided to The Real Deal about the project mix and broker switch. A previous version of the story incorrectly stated the mix of office and retail on the site. It has been changed to be roughly half and half.