Maguire Announces New Tower: Plans to Build, or Plans to Sell?

By Eric Richardson
Published: Tuesday, October 17, 2006, at 08:36AM

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — I held off on posting about the new office tower the first written about on Friday not because I thought they had their facts wrong, but just because there’s a lot of difference between “announcing” something and being ready to turn dirt on it. Friday’s Downtown News had sources claiming that Maguire Properties was about to announce a new 50 story office tower for the big gap between 7+Fig and its garage.

Today the LA Times writes that Maguire has officially announced the building and does something that’s highly rare for them: they give the Downtown News credit on breaking the story. They also give some cautionary words to when this project might be built.

Complicating development plans are widespread reports that Maguire Properties may be sold because the hot market for investment-grade office buildings has made its properties worth more than the company as a whole.

The planned tower would need city approvals. Word of it was first reported in the Los Angeles Downtown News.

… By creating a viable development plan for the site, Maguire would increase the value of his portfolio, said a real estate executive who asked not to be identified because he didn’t want to jeopardize future business dealings with Maguire.

“If there is no development concept, there is no way to monetize” the potential of the site, the executive said. “They’re not anywhere near building.”

Maguire’s track record Downtown is very good and the office market is certainly improving, so you would hope those factors do lead to the project getting built.

An interesting tidbit from the end:

New York-based Brookfield also owns a shopping center there called 7th & Fig. Brookfield plans a “significant retail repositioning” of the 20-year-old mall next year, said Anthony Manos, senior vice president. He declined to elaborate.

Retail repositioning, eh?



Comments

1
John Crandell writes:

Not hard it is to imagine R. Keating hating to have the primary view of his new tower all bollixed up by the circular space frame floating above the market court. “Repositioning” the retail segment of 7th & Fig would be a smart move, on both architectural and merchandising bases. It is damned hard to imagine the old Broadway Plaza “repositioned” given it’s fortress aspect. Only solution there is to put up a movie scrim and turn it into Cinema Paradiso. But what sort of entertainment component as a forecourt for Richard’s Tower might draw the interest from other capitals? What interest, say, might the publishing world’s Taschen take in such a place? Severe, sexy and light-years into the future. Leave the conventioneers saying to themselves: “Been There; Done That; And I’m Ready For MORE!”

# on Oct.17.2006 AT 11:43 PM
2
raymond writes:

its good to see that they are gonna reposition the mall how about bringing all the retail to street level and adding another building on top so in a sense 7+fig will be a vertical mall because i bet u 50% of those shops currently in the mall dont get any if no business at all, i figure they should just make the big retail/shops that they already have in maybe a 3 level configuration with Robinsons-May & a Target (wishful thinking), Horton & converse pharmacy, California Pizza Kitchen & Starbucks on Level 1, Level 2 would have Cingular, Godiva, Ms Fields, Gold’s Gym, and level 3 could have all the other restaurants, possibly the Robinsons-May and Target could have multi level flors . just a thought

# on Oct.18.2006 AT 04:08 PM

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