After 15 Years, Westside Highrise Lands Tenant

LOS ANGELES-A Westside highrise that has stood vacant for more than a decade finally has its first tenant, thanks to a relatively small lease signed by a local real estate company.

The company, privately held Molasky & Cassidy, will take a modest 1,100 sf inside Spieker Properties’ long-vacant Santa Monica Gateway development at 11175 Santa Monica Boulevard. Terms of the five-year lease weren’t disclosed.

The black-and-green Gateway building is a familiar site to motorists passing over Santa Monica Boulevard while driving on the San Diego (405) Freeway. Its original owner halted construction in the mid-1980s, and there was little reason to finish it in the 1990s because the recession had sent vacancies in the area soaring.

Spieker Properties purchased the building as the dot-com boom began to peak about 18 months ago. The Menlo Park-based REIT finished up construction, adding such amenities as cutting-edge communications systems that weren’t even dreamed about when ground was first broken 15 years ago.

Realizing that most dot-com tenants no longer need vast amounts of space, Spieker has built several relatively small suites inside the project to appeal to small space-users.