Drink Company Moves LA Offices From Venice to Downtown

A popular beverage company is moving its Los Angeles office from the beach all the way to downtown.

Yerba Madre, formerly known as Guayakí, has signed a long-term lease for a full floor at the Fine Arts Building in Downtown Los Angeles, L.A. Business First reported. The company will occupy 9,480 square feet at 811 West 7th Street once it moves operations from its office in Venice at 215 Rose Avenue. The firm’s headquarters are in Oakland and opted to rebrand from Guayakí last May to Yerba Madre, or “Mother Herb,” to reflect “a deepened commitment to people and planet, and the ancestral roots of yerba mate,” the company said.

The Fine Arts Building was built in 1926 and spans 115,902 square feet across 13 stories. The structure was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1974.

Yerba Madre’s “decision to relocate from Venice to Downtown Los Angeles reflects the area’s strengthening market fundamentals and the growing appeal of occupying creative space in a truly distinctive environment,” said NAI Capital Commercial’s Gibran Begum, who represented Fine Arts Building landlord Manchester Capital Management in the lease transaction.

Recent office sales in Downtown Los Angeles indicate the market might have a long way to go before reaching pre-pandemic levels.

New York-based investment company 601W has emerged as a buyer for a distressed office tower on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles. The Brookfield-owned Wells Fargo Center’s North Tower, rising 54 stories and spanning 1.4 million square feet, is reportedly set to trade hands for $180 million, The Real Deal previously reported. That price works out to about $130 per square foot. Last month, another distressed Brookfield-owned downtown office tower, the Bank of America Plaza, hit the market. The 57-story tower was last appraised at $212.5 million, or about $150 per square foot, in 2024 — a stark contrast from its $605 million value a decade ago.

Other office deals that signal a possible positive trend in the downtown market seem to be few and far between.

Last month, L.A. Metro bought the 106,004-square-foot office building at 500 South Santa Fe Avenue in the Arts District from SteelWave for $45 million. The $450 per-square-foot sales price dwarfs the downtown office average of $240 per square foot and the $342 per square foot average across Greater Los Angeles.

— Chris Malone Méndez