Snap and Hulu expand in Santa Monica

After a sluggish start to its tenure as a publicly traded company, Snapchat parent Snap, Inc. enjoyed a banner year in 2020, seeing its revenue and stock price soar to all-time highs.  That growth will soon be reflected in the footprint of the company's Santa Monica headquarters.

The Commercial Observer reports and Snap has inked a 140,000-square-foot lease with landlord Boston Properties to expand its presence at the Santa Monica Business Park.  Snap has been headquartered in a 300,000-square-foot space at the sprawling campus since 2017, when consolidated a series of scattered offices in the neighboring Venice community under a single roof.

Elsewhere in Santa Monica, another Southern California tech and media giant is also in expansion mode.

The Real Deal reports that Hulu has agreed to lease an addition 91,000 square feet of office space the Colorado Center, increasing the total size of its headquarters to more than 350,000 square feet.  Boston Properties, which also owns the Colorado Center, signed a 10-year, 72,000-square-foot deal with Roku in April.

The L.A. Business Journal reports that real estate brokerage Avison Young is moving its Downtown office to the Figueroa at Wilshire.  The Canadian firm has signed an 11-year lease for 9,647 square feet of office space on the 44th floor of the tower, which is owned by Brookfield Properties. 

Avison Young is relocating from a nearby tower at 555 S. Flower Street.

In Beverly Hills, JLL announced this week that high-end residential brokerage firm Corcoran Group is expanding its footprint.  Its franchise affiliate, Corcoran Global Living, has signed a new lease for a 5,000-square-foot office at 9647 Brighton in the in the Business Triangle.  The property is located at the northeast corner of Brighton Way and N. Bedford Drive.

Lastly, the Business Journal reports that membership box service FabFitFun has leased a full floor of WeWork's Pacific Design Center location - roughly 55,000 square feet - to serve as its new headquarters.

Things to read from the past week

Los Angeles Metro expansion animation 1900-2028 An animated history of the rise and fall of the Red and Yellow Cars of the Pacific Electric and Los Angeles Railways, followed by the rise of Metro's light rail, subway, and BRT lines (Metro Liner - YouTube)

Metro Board to Vote on Greater Flexibility for Highway Funding This Month "The proposal would remove existing restrictions on the use of some sales tax revenue (Measures M and R) to allow the flexibility to fund projects that include complete streets features – such as transit, walk, and bike components. The new policy would not mandate inclusion of these features, but would allow local entities – cities, the county – greater flexibility to include them if appropriate." (Streetsblog LA)

CRRC in Springfield unveils new cars A sneak peak at Metro's HR-4000 subway cars, which will be put into action on the A and D Lines. (WWLP-22News - YouTube)

San Francisco is nearing coronavirus herd immunity, but L.A. still has months to go "L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said she did not believe L.A. County had achieved herd immunity yet; she is hoping to reach that goal by the end of the summer." (LA Times)

Planning for Equity: Putting the Community in the Downtown Community Plan The Downtown Community Plan gets its first hearing at City Planning Commission next week, and representatives are Little Tokyo, Chinatown, and Skid Row are once again making  the push for its People’s Plan. (Streetsblog LA)

L.A. is poised to ban tenant harassment. Here’s what the proposed law covers The proposed ordinance would cover behavior including threats of physical harm, eliminating services required under a lease, revealing a tenant's immigration status, failing to make repairs, refusing to accept lawful payments of rent, and more. (LA Times)

There Weren’t Enough Porta-Potties for the Homeless To Begin With, in October They’re Being Pulled "An L.A. TACO analysis of more than 700 emails and spreadsheets from LASAN found that the city failed to monitor the hundreds of hand-washing stations rolled out to encampments at the onset of the pandemic daily and dozens of stations went days, weeks, and in some cases more than a month without being serviced by vendors." (LA Taco)

Q&A: How Councilman Mike Bonin plans to fix Venice’s homelessness crisis "After spending weeks reporting on the homelessness crisis in Venice, Times reporters Benjamin Oreskes and Doug Smith sat down with Councilman Mike Bonin, who has represented the area since 2013. In a nearly two-hour interview, he weighed in on how the fights over homelessness have consumed the neighborhood and laid out his vision of how a humane clearing of tents that run along the boardwalk could occur." (LA Times)

If you're a Californian, the state wants to cover almost half the cost of your new home "The 'California Dream for All' program, which the Democrats first outlined in April in the Build Back Boldly budget plan, would pay for, and own, up to 45% of a home for a first-time homebuyer, cutting the purchase price of a home nearly in half. The lawmakers wrote in the proposal that this program would allow Californians to buy their first home with a 'silent partner,' significantly reducing the homebuying cost and helping close the racial wealth gap." (Business Insider)

How NASA Satellite Images Could Influence Climate Change Policy "To most, NASA's satellite images of Southern California space look like a weather map, but the yellow clusters that hover over downtown L.A. and Long Beach don't signify rain. Instead they represent high levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is fueling climate change." (dot LA)

US will restore $1B for California’s troubled bullet train "The U.S. Department of Transportation finalized settlement negotiations to restore the money for the high-speed rail project that was revoked by the Trump administration in 2019, Newsom said Thursday night." (Associated Press)

Lumber is wildly expensive now. Even picnic table prices are through the roof "The cost of a common commodity has scrambled summer plans, and it’s not gas: Soaring lumber prices are making new homes, renovations and even simple picnic tables drastically more expensive.  At times, bills are coming in thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars over estimate. In the most extreme cases, projects have come to a screeching halt as prices spiral out of control." (LA Times)

LAUSD Wants To Build More Affordable Housing For Teachers And Staff The school board recently approved a $1.5-million study for building housing on its properties.  According to Superintendent Austin Beutner, LAUSD may have capacity for up to 2,000 units of "affordable workforce housing" on its land. (LAist)