South Bay Complex Gets New Lease on Life

EL SEGUNDO, CA-Technology giant TRW Inc. has signed an $11-million lease for all 55,000 sf of space inside an office building here, rescuing the complex from what appeared to be a grim future.

The building stands at 2221 Park Ave. It was built by a private group known as Digital Media Campus and was originally designed to serve as incubator space for startup Internet and technology firms.

As the dot-com troubles worsened in the spring and such incubators became more like incinerators, PM Realty Group—which was hired as the project’s leasing and management agent in April–persuaded the building’s owner to target larger, well-established companies instead. The deal with TRW was signed and completed barely two months later.

The new lease also is the latest indicator that tenants and investors alike believe that LA’s El Segundo market will continue to fare better than most other parts of the region. Earlier this week, GlobeSt.com reported that affiliates of San Francisco-based Krausz Cos. paid more than $65 million for a pair of office buildings totaling 270,00 sf in the city. A few days earlier, Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. announced that it had paid $67.2 million for the nearby, 239,086-sf Continental Grand Plaza II office complex.

PM Realty has won a number of plum assignments in the LA area recently. Just last month, it was awarded the exclusive property and construction-management contract for Sumitomo Life Realty’s 1000 Wilshire office building. The 452,000-sf, 22-story office tower is a familiar site to motorists cutting through Downtown on the Harbor (110) Freeway.