The online coupon company, Honey, has signed a lease to occupy the former Coca-Cola syrup manufacturing plant in 2019. Hudson Pacific, the property owner, paid $49 million in 2015 and renamed the site to Fourth+Traction. They purchased it from GPI who purchased it for $19 million in 2014. One of my colleagues and I represented the buyer in that sale, where they then more than doubled their money flipping it. The seller then was a woman related to the man that once occupied the building as a toy distributor, T.T. Toys.
The Honey lease follows other recent DTLA Arts District transactions such as Warner Music at the Ford Building and Spotify at the At Mateo complex.
Historical photo below showing occupancy of Coca-Coca at the building.
Los Angeles has an abundance of street art, especially DTLA and in the DTLA Arts District. I and many downtown dwellers view and define “street art” as artwork in a public space that has a generally pleasing design. Contrast that with typical street-gang graffiti, which was primarily composed of dreadfully designed words and dominated the public realm prior to 2000. Most denizens consider graffiti to be blight. Street art adds value to the public realm as well as property values, especially in areas such as the Arts District. Check out some great examples here: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/lastreetart/. A large portion of DTLA street art has been painted on industrial buildings.
Street art is not exclusive to gentrifying areas. See below in the heart of Skid Row with homeless encampments.
According to the 2017 Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region:
With 747,600 salaried jobs in the creative industries, California far surpasses New York State, which has 478,100 jobs, followed by Texas at 230,600 jobs.
In a postindustrial society, activities based on creativity are an essential feature of a flourishing economy.
What unifies this dissimilar set of industries is the fact that they all trade creative assets in the form of intellectual property – the medium through which creativity is transformed into something of economic value. Within these industries, we find the intersection of art, culture, business, and technology.
As shown above, California leads the nation in industrial cold storage cubic feet, that is warehouses with coolers and freezers. What drives this inventory of frigid distribution space? Metro areas have large populations along with food production facilities and food logistic hubs. California has major port activity along its coast to drive much of the logical demand.
The City of Los Angeles is in the process of updating its land use plans. These plans are the way the City plans for the future. The Draft Boyle Heights Community Plan Update is the blueprint for guiding this change. For a PDF of the plan see Boyle Heights Zoning Plan Update. Note the industrial section known as The Flats, on the left side of the image, is being rezoned from Industrial to an Innovative zone. This may be a riff from the CASP multi-zoned ordinance passed for the area north of DTLA near LA State Park, the cornfield.
