Developers Hatching $500M Egg-Shaped Creative Office Tower On Sunset Boulevard
A Los Angeles-based family partnership that owns a large property in the 6000 block of Sunset Boulevard wants to raze the mostly low-rise commercial structures on the site and build a $500M office tower that resembles a large glass egg.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the project would rise 22 stories and contain about 500K SF of offices. The developers imagine the building renting out to one large entertainment tenant.
Netflix, already Hollywood's biggest tenant, is an occupier of one of the buildings that would be demolished to make way for the new project, the Times reports.
MAD Architects, led by Ma Yansong, would design the tower. Yansong is the architect of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, under construction now in Exposition Park.
Yansong said in a statement announcing the project that the inspiration for the design came from the curves of the Griffith Observatory, Capitol Records Building, Hollywood Bowl and the still-shuttered Cinerama Dome. But the look of the building is clearly from the future, not the past.
"This site is as innovative as you're going to get. It really is the office of the future," said Edgar Khalatian, an LA land use professional who represents the owners, led by LA investor and real estate agent Maggie Gong Miracle.
The exterior of the structure would also have exterior orbs, referred to as funiculars, which will ferry as many as 30 passengers from the ground floor to the top level, which would comprise an event space and restaurant, Khalatian said.
Yansong told the Times that the coronavirus pandemic influenced the project's design, which leans heavily on the desire for fresh air, natural light and a holistic sense of well-being. Los Angeles-based SALT Landscape Architects would be designing landscapes for the futuristic project. The building would pursue WELL and LEED Certification, The Architect's Newspaper reported.
The project, called The Star, would require a general plan amendment and a zoning change from the city in order to be built. The developers anticipate two years to get city approvals and another three to build the project, the Times reported.
The neighborhood is home base for Netflix, which rents two roughly 13-story buildings nearby and the entirety of the office space at Kilroy Realty's On Vine, which opened this year. A few blocks away, Columbia Square is home to ViacomCBS.
Thanks to the rise in demand for streaming media, entertainment office space has been at the heart of the most prominent new developments proposed in the last year in Hollywood. Bardas Investment Group and Boston-based Bain Capital Real Estate are planning a city-block-sized studio and creative office project on Santa Monica Boulevard. Hudson Pacific Properties is planning a new 15-story office tower at its Sunset Gower Studios.
