Dive Brief:
- Real estate investment trusts Hudson Pacific Properties and Macerich announced Tuesday that Google has agreed to lease the Westside Pavilion shopping center in Los Angeles in its entirety for a term of 14 years. The mall will be fully converted to an office campus — dubbed One Westside — in time for Google to move in by 2022.
- Gensler is heading up design for the 584,000-square-foot, LEED Silver-certified conversion, which will see a repurposing of the mall’s high ceilings, atrium and skylight. One Westside will also feature floor plates of up to 150,000 square feet each, which will provide open and flexible layouts; 45,000 square feet of outdoor terraces and patios with 15-foot-wide folding glass walls; and a rooftop amenity space with a garden deck. The deck will connect via direct bridge to an existing movie theater, tavern restaurant and some retail that will remain part of the new One Westside.
- The mall is also located along the Los Angeles Metro’s Expo Line, which provides light-rail service between downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The property is still operating as a shopping center, but Victor Coleman, chairman and chief executive of Hudson Pacific Properties, told The Wall Street Journal that construction would begin after the last leases expire at the end of this month.
Dive Insight:
As more Americans opt to do their shopping online, owners and managers of mall properties are looking for other ways to fill up empty space. This could mean a complete or partial conversion, but, in either case, these adaptive reuse projects require construction renovations to fit a new type of tenant.
In the East Cambridge neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts, New England Development is seeking local approval to redevelop 140,000 square feet of retail on the third floor of the CambridgeSide mall into office space. In planning board documents, according to Bisnow, the developer said converting some of the mall’s space into offices was “integral to the long-term success” of the property given the “changed circumstances in the retail market.” The shift, if approved, would also add more much-needed office space to the area.
In Plano, Texas, just outside of Dallas, the new owner of the 1.1 million-square-foot Collin Creek Mall plans on undertaking a conversion of the property that will transform the 37-year-old property into a $1 billion mixed-use project, The Dallas Morning News reported. Centurion American Development Group would demolish parts of the existing property and build some new components, resulting in about 400,000 square feet of retail, 1 million square feet of office space and for-sale townhouses and condominiums.
