Playa Vista WELCOME HOME

Take a hard look down Millennium Drive into the heart of Playa Vista’s mixed-use construction binge. The above image–sent yesterday by an e-mail tipster–portrays several of the structures which will eventually define the planned community’s main commercial hub. Near the center of the photograph, we see a construction crane raised high above Lincoln Property Company’s Runway at Playa Vista. The $260 million development will stretch from McConnell Avenue to Village Drive, offering wide sidewalks flanked by more than 200,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

Feast your eyes on the latest shiny object to sprout from the ashes of Howard Hughes’s once expansive empire. According to multiple sources, the Los Angeles Jewish Home has officially broken ground on the Fountainview at Gonda Westside, an upscale senior housing development in the Playa Vista neighborhood. The $100 million complex will feature a series of low-rise structures, offering a total of 175 independent living units and 24 assisted living/memory care units.

Seven months after breaking ground in Playa Vista, construction is going vertical for the Collective, an $80 million office complex from developer Tishman Speyer. The speculative development, designed by local architect Joey Shimoda, will create approximately 204,000 square feet of office space within a series of two-story structures. Each of the Collective’s five buildings are designed to emanate an “inviting yet industrial feel,” with an open floor plan and exposed double-height ceilings.

With Yahoo! on the cusp of signing a 130,000-square-foot lease in the under-construction Collective campus, Tishman Speyer Properties is now forging ahead with plans for their remaining Playa Vista real estate. According to a November case filing from the Department of City Planning, the New York-based developer intends to construct two low-rise office buildings adjacent to Playa Vista Central Park. The first, a six-story structure, would rise from a nearly four-acre site at 12126 West Waterfront Drive.

Only from above can one fully appreciate the massive amount of construction underway throughout the Playa Vista neighborhood. The thousand-acre expanse, formerly a component of the Howard Hughes aerospace empire, is now giving birth to creative office space, pricey chain retailers, and thousands of luxury apartments, condominiums, and single-family homes. Take a quick photo tour through phase two of the planned community, from a vantage point high up in the Westchester Bluffs.

Google’s impending arrival in Playa Vista has set off a monumental shift in the West Los Angeles office market. After years of searching for space in traditional creative hubs such as Santa Monica and Venice, numerous tech firms are now looking further south in order to situate themselves closer to the Bay Area heavyweight. With this changing landscape in mind, a New York-based developer has broken ground on a speculative office complex directly across the street from Google’s future twelve-acre campus.

While much has been said about Playa Vista’s transformation into one of Southern California’s preeminent tech hubs, the neighborhood is also in the midst of a robust wave of residential development. Of the approximately 2,800 residential units currently under construction in the thousand-acre expanse, the lion’s share is encompassed by the Villas at Playa Vista, a multi-building development from the Irvine Company. The project consists of three Mediterranean-style buildings, each featuring four levels of residences above two floors of parking.

The center of gravity in the Los Angeles office market shifted south last year, when word surfaced that both Google and Yahoo would move their Southern California operations to the burgeoning Playa Vista neighborhood. Bolstered by this news, New York-based developer Tishman Speyer broke ground in February on a speculative office complex located midway between the future homes of the two tech behemoths. The campus - tentatively known as the Brickyard - is being designed by Michael Maltzan Architects, the Downtown-based firm whose previous work includes the adjacent Playa Vista Central Park.

With demand increasing for Westside office space, real estate investment trust Hudson Pacific Properties (HPP) has begun renovating a 1980s building in Playa Vista to make it more appealing to tenants in the creative and entertainment industries. The vacant six-story structure, located at 12655 Jefferson Boulevard, was purchased by HPP last October for $38 million. Planned renovations would expand the building’s leasable footprint to 96,000 square feet, following the conversion of an internal stairwell and a portion of its underground parking garage to office space.

After a year-and-a-half of construction, the finish line is finally in sight for the Collective at Playa Vista, a 200,000-square-foot creative office campus from New York-based developer Tishman Speyer. The $80 project, designed by local architect Joey Shimoda, consists of a series of two-story structures on approximately 6.3 acres of land at 12005 and 10215 West Bluff Creek Drive. Each building emanates industrial chic with steel columns and exposed ceilings up to 21 feet in height.