World's first AI arts museum, 'Mansion tax' breakdown, and more

Years after completing the Entrada office complex next to the 405 Freeway in Culver City, Lincoln Property Company has filled out roughly 50 percent of the building.

Leases announced earlier this month with toy manufacturer Jazwares (51,000 square feet), Impact Networking (14,000 suqare feet), and an undisclosed ad-tech company (75,000) square feet account for 140,000 square feet of space - roughly half of the building's leaseable space.

Those are among the largest leases in Los Angeles during 2024, and could bode well for Lincoln Property's plans for additional office buildings elsewhere in Culver City.

Fashion label L'Agence is taking a 21,000-square-foot lease at Jamison's Harbor Building to create its new corporate headquarters. The womenswear brand, which is sold at Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom's, and Saks Fifth Avenue, is consolidating its operations under a single roof  while looking to expand its retail operations both within the United States and internationally. Greg Astor and Ben Silver of JLL represented Jamison in the transaction.

The 246,000-square-foot Harbor Building, located at 4201 Wilshire Boulevard, was completed in the 1950s for J. Paul Getty's Tidewater Oil Company.

CicLAvia is back again on Sunday, October 13 with a Heart of LA event connecting Downtown, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, the Arts District, Boyle Heights, Echo Park, and the Sixth Street Viaduct.

Once again, here's the rules: only people-powered vehicles allowed. That means no electric scooters, skateboards, hoverboards, unicycles, motorcycles and other non-people-powered vehicles are permitted. However, Class 1 e-bike pedal-assist is allowed, Class 2 e-bikes are allowed when throttle is powered off, and Class 3 e-bikes are allowed when pedal-assist is powered down. 

In advanced of the planned expansion of the J.W. Marriott hotel complex and the Los Angeles Convention Center, Chick Hearn Court is being closed to automobile traffic between Figueroa and Georgia Streets to enable an expansion of adjacent Peacock Plaza. In addition to more car-free space for visitors to L.A. Live, that also opens up space for AEG to add new pylon signage to the closed street. Check out a rendering below.

Here's what we're reading this week:

‘Mansion tax’ breakdown "From the start, despite being widely described as a 'mansion tax,' the measure has applied to most real estate transactions that meet the $5 million threshold. That includes apartment buildings, offices and retail centers. Recent data show most of the measure’s revenue so far is coming from buildings that are not mansions." (LAist)

"If it hasn't broken ground by now, it's not happening" "Time is really running out. LA cannot continue to count on Metro's megaprojects alone to manage our way to a 'car-free' games. The pricey marquee investments like the D line to Westwood? Important! But as I wrote in April, they're still only going to get us part of the way there." (Torched)

Dataland, the world’s first AI arts museum, will anchor the Grand complex in downtown L.A. "The 20,000-square foot museum, whose exact opening date has not yet been announced, is being built with four gallery spaces by the Gensler architectural firm. An escalator will take guests from the entrance under a soaring, 30-foot ceiling to immersive experiences below. Dataland is privately funded and will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art; certain artworks may be sold on the blockchain. A nonprofit branch of the organization, founded in 2023 (called RAS AI Foundation), is dedicated to the expansion of ethical AI research." (LA Times)

Vets are pushing for a ‘Town Center’ on L.A.’s VA campus. But what is it? And will it have a hotel bar? "D’Andrea said the developers’ plans provide 90,000 square feet of space for community uses in the five buildings for amenities such as a town hall, workforce development center, coffee shop, barbershop, art studio, fitness facility, a business incubator, library or tech lab." (LA Times)

Legislative Update: Ending Harmful Road Widening, and Redefining “Major Transit Stops” "No road widening requirement for infill housing developments, and refining the definition of a 'major transit stop'" (Streetsblog California)

Los Angeles has to rezone the entire city. Why are officials protecting single-family-home neighborhoods? "Los Angeles has to rezone the entire city. Why are officials protecting single-family-home neighborhoods? "The 124-page study, which the planning department initially refused to disclose to The Times through a public records request, calls the century-old zoning designation a key factor in maintaining current racial and economic disparities and one that originated as a means of advancing the interests of white-led real estate and homeowner groups. The city awarded a contract to write the report in July 2021, and published it last week after The Times argued its withholding was unlawful." (LA Times)

Can this landmark L.A. skyscraper survive a major quake? County officials want to find out "Faced with the prospect of an extensive, and expensive, seismic safety retrofit for its 1960s-era downtown headquarters, L.A. County decided to vet an alternative: a far newer building, located just blocks away. Not only was it built under stricter standards, the reasoning goes, but it was available at a massive discount compared with its pre-pandemic price tag." (LA Times)

Judge rules LA broke state law by blocking affordable housing in the San Fernando Valley "In March 2023, a developer submitted plans to build 360 low- and moderate-income apartments in Winnetka through ED1. However, the city ended up putting the Winnetka development and a handful of other projects on ice after Bass changed ED1 to ban expedited affordable housing approvals in neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes." (LAist)

Southern California’s hottest commercial real estate market is for tenants that aren’t human "One Wilshire is the mother of all data centers in the West, a discreet terminus for major digital links between Asia and North America that help sustain the world’s bottomless need for data storage and computing power." (LA Times)

Project to convert Puente Hills landfill gets $15 million in push for area’s first regional park "The project known as the Puente Hills Regional Park is intended to transform the nation’s largest defunct landfill into a 142-acre park." (SGV Tribune)

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