United Talent Renews Beverly Hills Headquarters

United Talent Agency isn’t joining in on the Hollywood exodus as film productions flee Southern California in the wake of the pandemic.

UTA has renewed its lease for its 192,000-square-foot headquarters at UTA Plaza in Beverly Hills, Commercial Observer reported. UTA has operated out of the DivcoWest-owned building at 9336-9346 Civic Center Drive since 2011; DivcoWest bought the building in 2018 from the Rockefeller Group for $236 million. UTA shares the building with entertainment giant Live Nation, which also has its headquarters at UTA Plaza.

UTA joins Artists First, another talent agency, in committing to office space Los Angeles as Hollywood studios have had leasing issues since the outbreak of the pandemic. Artists First signed a lease for nearly 23,000 square feet at Irvine Company’s building at 2121 Avenue of the Stars in Century City. In 2023, Verve Talent Agency signed a 53,000-square-foot lease at Lincoln Property Company’s BA/SE campus in Hollywood.

In August, Hackman Capital Partners and Affinius Capital locked down a $165 million refinancing loan for the 315,000-square-foot Raleigh Studios campus on Melrose Avenue. Earlier this year, Hackman earned approval from the Los Angeles City Council for its $1 billion redevelopment endeavor at Television City; the firm is currently embroiled in a legal spat with Rick Caruso, who owns The Grove mall across the street, over the City Council’s purported violation of environmental law in allowing the project to proceed.

On-location filming in Los Angeles has been on a decline since last year. In the third quarter of this year, on-location filming was down 13.2 percent from the third quarter of last year, per Film L.A. The drop-off was even more pronounced earlier this year when on-location filming fell 22 percent in the first quarter year-over-year. In the past five years, the number of productions filming in L.A. has dropped by an average of 37 percent. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s expansion of California’s Film & Television Tax Credit from $330 million to $750 million was expected to spur more local productions.

As a result, rather than building new film studios, some companies are converting commercial spaces into places to film projects. Amazon redeveloped buildings in downtown Culver City into its Culver Studios Campus, while East End Studios’ in-development Mission Campus in downtown L.A. takes over a former cold-storage facility.

— Chris Malone Méndez