Los Angeles County is one step closer to acquiring Downtown's Gas Company Tower.

On October 8, the County Board of Supervisors voted to pay up to $200 million to acquire the 1.5-million-square-foot office tower at 555 W. 5th street, as well as well as airspace parcels considering of 1,184 parking spaces at the nearby World Trade Center complex. According to a staff report, a final vote to purchase the building is slated to occur on November 6, 2024 following a legally-required public notification period.

Built in 1991, the more than 50-story tower has hemorrhaged tenants following the onset of the global pandemic in 2020. At the time new of L.A. County's potential move first came to light in August, the building was only 50 percent occupied. Since then, the tower's namesake tenant - the Southern California Gas Company - has announced that it will relocate into a 200,000-square-foot space in the nearby 2Cal office tower.

The struggling building was previously slated to see the City of Los Angeles move various departments into roughly 300,000 square feet of leased space within the building.

Acquisition of the Gas Company tower once again raises the question of what will happen to the County's 33 office buildings which are in need of seismic retrofit. That includes the County's headquarters - the mid-century Hall of Administration at Temple Street and Grand Avenue. The cost of retrofitting these structures is reportedly in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

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