Google’s landlord lists tech firm’s Venice campus for sale

Google’s Venice campus is hitting the market.

Net Lease Office Properties, a spin-off of real estate investment trust W.P. Carey, is listing the themed Binoculars Building off the Venice Beach Boardwalk, The Real Deal has learned.

The derivative company hired CBRE to put the 78,578-square-foot building currently occupied by Google up for sale, according to an offering memo obtained by TRD.

The brokerage did not provide an asking price for the historic, binoculars-shaped building at 340 West Main Street, but nine other smaller, and less whimsical office buildings currently listed in Venice are asking $1,583 per square foot on average, according to Loopnet. Google’s triple-net-lease at the building, which dates back to 2011, is up for renewal in October 2030, according to the offering memo.

W.P. Carey’s history with the property goes back much further than Google. The company bought the Venice building for about $18.3 million in 1995. In 2023, it announced a massive spinoff of 59 of its office properties into a separate REIT, and the Binoculars Building was on the list facing a possible reappraisal or sale.

Aside from the Venice location, Google has a campus spanning three buildings in Silicon Beach. The tech giant’s long-term plans for those properties are unclear. Google reversed course on its office expansion in L.A. last year and its former development partners Hudson Pacific and Macerich sold the former Los Angeles Mall to the University of California, Los Angeles for about $700 million.

A spokesperson for Google did not immediately provide any comments.

There will likely be dueling bids for the one-of-a-kind property in Venice, according to CBRE’s Todd Tydlaska, who’s marketing the property along with Sean Sullivan, Michael Longo, Melissa Moock and Grant Goldman.

Tydlaska said through a CBRE spokesperson that there’s already been “strong initial interest” in the listing. He anticipates a “competitive process,” he added via the spokesperson.

Office vacancy has fallen faster in West Los Angeles than Downtown, but it’s still hovering around 22 percent, according to a report by CBRE. Current average asking rent for office space in Venice is unclear, but asking rent in neighborhoods like Century City and Marina Del Ray has climbed faster than other parts of the city, reaching an average of $5.57 per square foot last quarter, according to the report.

“This listing is a good example of what capital wants in the market right now,” Tydlaska said. “Great locations, high-profile assets… at attractive price bases.”

The CBRE spokesperson declined to comment further on the listing and a spokesperson for W.P. Carey did not respond to a request for comment.

Clarification: This story has been edited to reflect that Net Lease Office Properties, a spin-off of real estate investment trust W.P. Carey owns the building.