Southern California Gas Co. plans to leave its longtime registered office after having signed the largest office lease of the year in downtown Los Angeles.
Socalgas will leave her homonymous gas company at 555 W. 5th St., where she is a main tenant since the end of the building in 1991, and moves a block to the north towards another skyscraper, at 350 S. Grand Ave.
Public service has signed a long -term lease of nearly 200,000 square feet over eight floors in the Grand Avenue building on Bunker Hill often known as Two California Plaza, said its new owner, and is expected to move by spring 2026 after building the new offices. The gas company will also have an office on the ground floor to serve customers.
The Bunker Hill district was a bright point For the rental of offices in what was a long period of drop in occupation in the city center financial district since the pandemic inaugurated a movement towards the authorization of employees to work at home.
Bunker Hill benefited from a mixture of types of buildings, including offices, apartments and hotels, as well as one of the main cultural destinations in the city with institutions such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad Museum and the Colburn School of Music.
“We are in a way an island in the city center,” said owner Shaul Kuba, whose company CIM Group has two California Plaza. “There is so much culture, with a day and night population.”
The building is part of an office, hotel and retail complex that dates from the 1980s, a period when Bunker Hill, an old residential area, was renovated in an “urban renovation” process intended to transform the destroyed neighborhoods.
With the arrival of Socalgas, two California Plaza will house two large institutions in Los Angeles. The City National Bank already has its headquarters and currently has its name set at the top. As part of the rental agreement with Socalgas, its name will replace City National, said Kuba.
The new offices will have about two thirds of the size of the current Socalgas space in the gas company tower. A spokesperson for the public service, Erica Berardi, did not explain why the company moved, but said that its current lease expires at the end of 2026.
“Socalgas is delighted to maintain our head office in downtown Los Angeles, where we have a long history as one of the largest tenants in the region,” she said.
The lease is the largest in downtown Los Angeles this year, according to the analysis of Ruge Commercial Real Estate.
The roots of the utility in the city center date from the 1800s. It is the largest public gas distribution service in the United States, serving around 21 million customers in 24,000 square miles in California in the center and southern.
In a separate transaction, the tower of the gas company is being sold. The County of Los Angeles has temporarily agreed to buy the prominent office skyscraper near the historic Biltmore High Hotel for $ 215 million in a foreclosure sale that could take months.
The supervisor's advice must always approve the purchase and the county began the reasonable diligence process of the property examination for possible structural problems or other problems before finalizing the transaction.
