Apple plans 550,000sf office campus in Culver City

Nearly one year after shelling out $162 million for a handful of properties on the Los Angeles-Culver City border, Apple has pulled back the curtain on its plans to redevelop them into a large office campus.

Variety reports that the Cupertino-based tech giant will build more than 550,000 square feet of space on the properties, which are located at 8825-8871 Washington Boulevard, 8827-8829 National Boulevard, and 8876-8888 Venice Boulevard.  Those sites abut an existing 128,000-square-foot building at the intersection of Washington and National Boulevards, which Apple leases from developers LPC West and Clarion Partners.

The proposed campus, when completed, would more than double Apple's footprint in the region.  The Los Angeles Times reports that the company currently occupies approximately 500,000 square feet of space in and around Culver City, employing over 1,500 people working on Apple TV+, Apple Music, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.  Apple, as part of a $430-billion U.S. investment plan announced earlier this year, indicated that it would grow its Culver City office to more than 3,000 employees by the year 2026.

A timeline for the campus has not been announced.

The project, which would replace a series of small commercial and light industrial buildings, is the latest large development to rise on the blocks surrounding Metro's Culver City Station.

Directly across National Boulevard, the $350-million Ivy Station complex replaced a park-and-ride lot with a new hotel, apartments, retail, and a 240,000-square-foot office building leased by WarnerMedia.  WarnerMedia subsidiary HBO had previously been in talks to lease Apple's space on Washington Boulevard.

A short distance west on Washington, another tech giant with a foot in the entertainment industry - Amazon - has leased more than 600,000 square feet of space at the Culver Studios complex and the neighboring Culver Steps development.