Retail Reuse: Former Macy's Now Creative Office Steps From Google Campus
A former Macy's near the Westside Pavilion mall is nearing the end of a $180M makeover that turned the big-box store into creative office space.
GPI Cos. led the effort to transform the Macy's, a project called West End, which added 240K SF of office across the street from the Google campus that took the place of the mall.
"West End is an ambitious and exciting project. The new building offers the very best features sought after by tenants in a beautiful, state-of-the-art office environment,” GPI Managing Partner Lee Wagman said in a press release.
Visible construction on the site began in early 2020, Urbanize reported. The Macy’s department store is now divided into two sections with a 52-foot-long courtyard. The renovation added lobbies and balconies, and visually opened the exterior of the building by adding floor-to-ceiling glass walls.
“Adaptive reuse of the former Westside Pavilion Macy's preserves an urban fabric that a generation of Angelenos associate with the memories of time spent with family and friends at the mall,” said HLW principal and Managing Director Sejal Sonani.
HLW served as the architect on the adaptive reuse project, and Del Amo Construction is the general contractor.
West End will debut into an office market with a fair amount of uncertainty. Demand for office space in LA dropped 12% in April from March’s totals, putting office demand at 75% of its pre-pandemic numbers, according to VTS. The first three months of this year showed occupancy losses across greater LA for the eighth quarter in a row, Cushman & Wakefield found.
The property at West Pico Boulevard and Overland Avenue is next door to another adaptive reuse project, a roughly 580K SF Google campus in the Westside Pavilion mall.
The transformation of the mall, now called One Westside, is a joint venture between Macerich and Hudson Pacific Properties. It has 584K SF of office space, all leased to Google since 2019, and 96K SF of dining and entertainment space.
HPP and Macerich delivered One Westside in Q4 2021 to Google for tenant improvements, according to investor disclosures. That project cost between $500M and $550M, Macerich estimates.
UPDATE, JUNE 17, 3:32 P.M. ET: Information about the general contractor for this project has been added to the story.
