Category Archives: Property Spotlights

With 16 properties spread throughout West Los Angeles and San Francisco, PMI owns and operates premiere corporate office space. This category introduces and promotes our unique creative suits.

Bebo.com to Relocate Corporate HQ to PMI’s Creative Office Building in West Los Angeles

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PMI Property is proud to announce that Bebo.com, the social networking website, signed a 2,000 square foot lease to relocate it’s headquarters to the creative office building at 10951 Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles, California.

Bebo was catapulted onto the social networking scene and embraced by users in 2005.  It can be considered one of the first examples of creating a successful social networking site.  Unfortunately, Bebo was quickly overshadowed by MySpace.  Then Facebook launched, and the social networking revolution we all know today exploded.  AOL purchased Bebo in 2008 for $850 million and sold it to the current owners for under $10 million in 2010.  The original founder Michael Birch netted $300 million on the deal after investing $8,000 to start Bebo.  The current owners operate Bebo as an international social meeting website, and it boasts over 400,000 unique visitors a month in the United States alone.  Bebo still has to compete with the giant of the social networking game: Facebook, with their 140 million unique monthly visitors.  In contrast, Friendster is down to 77,000 users a month.

But Bebo survived, and has fared well in comparison to other sites. They feature personal profile pages for users where they can post blogs, photos, music and videos, as well as online gaming.  Be sure to check out our new tenant, Bebo to see what they have to offer!

You can read more about Bebo.com here.

Loss of L.A. Art & Entertainment Jobs Explains Sluggish Westside Creative Market–But Digital Tech Continues to Surge On

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The Otis College of Art and Design commissioned a report for 2010 which was compiled by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation.  The report shows a loss of 80,000 jobs in Los Angeles creative industries from 2007 to 2010.  Only digital media employment managed to remain steady over the same period.  Since creative workers occupy creative office, these statistics explain the absorption losses in L.A.’s Westside creative office market.

What about 2011?  Our calculation of the Los Angeles creative industries (excluding informational services) reveals a gain of only 1,200 jobs from November 2010 to November 2011.  This percentage gain, under one half of one percent, corresponds to the sluggish leasing recovery in the greater Westside creative office buildings.  In constrast, information services alone gained 5,200 jobs– an increase of over 65%.  This job explosion in digital technology has translated to a surging demand for creative office space, so far primarily in Santa Monica.

This article by Mike Boehm of The Los Angeles Times lays out all the findings of the Otis Report on the Creative Economy of Los Angeles and Orange Counties: LA Creative Jobs, LA Times Dec 20 2011.

The Affordable Housing Dilemma in Los Angeles

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The market for affordable rental properties in the greater Los Angeles area has become a tricky question with an increasingly problematic solution.  If you are lucky enough to get a tip about a reasonably priced dwelling, chances are hundreds of other people did too– and you might just be too late.  The demand for affordable housing in Los Angeles outweighs the quantity that is actually available. The lack of sensibly priced rental properties has become somewhat precarious for residents.  Some people are going to extreme measures to provide what they consider as affordable housing.  One the other hand, some disagree that these properties are too small and crowded.  They feel that the landlords of these buildings are walking the line of illegal and immoral activities.  Hopefully the L.A. Housing Authority will step in and prevent this from happening again.

There are people taking the lack of space in Los Angeles to a whole new level. A person converted a single family home into multiple apartments where 44 people lived for rents as high as $500 per month.  This article explains the situation that occurred in South Los Angeles.  Check it out to read the entire story from the L.A. Times.

Tech Start-ups Flock to L.A.’s ‘Silicon Beach’

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Tech is quickly spreading profusely over Los Angeles.  Northern California is no longer the only place where up and coming tech, web, and new media companies are calling home.  The L.A. Times recently published an article detailing companies and new tech start-ups who have made chosen “Silicon Beach” over “Silicon Valley.”

Some start-ups are also searching for suites in Los Angeles that are flexible and easy to remodel to fit their needs as a company.  One major tenant broker reported a flurry of requirements for companies that produce video content for the web.  PMI has received interest from a few companies that require building several of these web video studios.  PMI is trying to figure out how to best accommodate these needs by making the restoration of the space less expensive.  The companies who are requesting restoration believe that the renovated studio will have additional value for the next company who will occupy it.  However, in the event that the next company does not prefer the modifications previously made– maybe they are involved with a different type of business– the company will want the web video studio layout removed.  Adding to the complexity of the situation, these companies also have different studio requirements; there isn’t an adequate generic standard these studios can be crafted by.

PMI is working to accomdate all of their tenant’s requests, and are happy to welcome new and creative companies at their properties.  With the creation of Silicon Beach, we expect the creative office space demand to rise even further.

Santa Monica Opens Nation’s Largest Bike Parking Center

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Bicycle parking across our 1460 4th Street building in Santa Monica. Photo: LA Metro

PMI recently started a program in San Francisco where we arranged bike parking for our tenant’s employees near the BART and Caltrain.  People can park their bikes overnight in participating garages and retrieve them in the morning after arriving in the city on their transit of choice.  Then they can continue the rest of the distance to work on their bike.  This eliminates the hassle of transporting a bicycle everyday.

The trend seems to be continuing in Los Angeles with the creation of an over 5,000 square foot bicycle garage in Santa Monica.  People that choose this alternative way to commute now have a state of the art facility that includes showers, lockers, restrooms, and an area to repair bicyles.  Our 1460 4th Street building in downtown Santa Monica is conveniently located right around the corner from the facility and we are excited to have this amazing addition close by for our tenants to utilize.

Transportation Nation outlines all the details in their article here.

Here’s a First: San Francisco Rescinds Parking Requirements on two PMI Buildings

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PMI recently applied for a variance which would reduce the parking requirements on two of its office buildings in the SoMa district of San Francisco.  The City granted the variance on 625 Third Street and 539 Bryant citing that San Francisco has substantially improved its public transit in the area.  The City also recently changed the parking zoning requirement from a minimum number of spaces required to a maximum number of spaces allowed.  Both properties are of easy walking distance to the Caltrain and within a block of municipal transit which runs every four minutes for a ten minute ride to BART.  Transit options will exponentially increase for the two properties.  The City has commenced construction on the new fourth street subway which will connect Caltrain SoMa with Chinatown with a stop near BART.  PMI has also contributed to the transit-friendly situation.  At PMI’s buildings, arrangements have been made with a garage near the Embarcadero BART Station for tenants to park their bikes at the garage overnight.  Tenants can then take the BART into the city and ride their bikes the rest of the way to work.  At 410 Townsend in SoMa, near Caltrain, PMI made arrangements for Zipcar, a car sharing company, to keep cars in its garage for the benefit of their tenants.

PMI Properties is an owner and investor in creative office buildings on the Westside of Los Angeles and in San Francisco.  Availabilities include 2,000 square feet in Santa Monica and Marina Del Ray and up to 18,000 square feet in Culver City.   For more information, go to http://www.pmiproperty.com.