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LA landlords rip out escalators, walls to attract tenants like Google, Netflix
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lacker 7y agoThis article is written awkwardly enough that it's hard to tell what the facts are. Companies including Google, Amazon and Netflix have agreed to rent entire buildings before construction has even begun.... Content creators, as such businesses are known, have rented more than 4 million square feet of Los Angeles County office space in the last three years, real estate brokerage CBRE said. Google is not typically known as a "content creator" business. What sort of companies count towards this 4 million square feet figure? Later the article refers to "FAANG-type tenants". FAANG is an acronym referring to 5 specific companies. What is a "FAANG-type tenant"? One of those five companies? Any tech company? It also isn't clear from this article whether this 4 million square feet is a lot. I poked around and from https://www.reonomy.com/properties/commercial-real-estate/us/california/los-angeles/1 https://www.reonomy.com/properties/commercial-real-estate/us... it looks like about 250 million square feet of commercial real estate changes hands in LA every year. So this tech effect is almost 2% of the real estate market.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoThey probably mean YouTube, which is part of Google.
- rolltiide 7y ago> Later the article refers to "FAANG-type tenants". FAANG is an acronym referring to 5 specific companies. What is a "FAANG-type tenant"? One of those five companies? Any tech company? obviously any of those large high growth innovative tech companies of the content-creating variety partially sarcasm. it should be further defined
- a_imho 7y agoBit off tangent but how is Netflix similar to the rest of the acronym?
- cbcoutinho 7y agoI think it's because they're all publicly traded tech companies worth over a certain market value
- Insanity 7y agoWell, netflix hosts content partially created by itself and partially by others. Facebook hosts content made entirely by others (I think). So it's... kind of similar to at least that one? But I do wonder why netflix and not microsoft. MSFT seems to be closer to the FAAG part. EDIT: A quick search on DDG revealed it's because of the value of their stock.
- lacker 7y agoA quick search on DDG revealed it's because of the value of their stock. That doesn't make sense because the value of Microsoft's stock is a lot closer to the other four than Netflix's stock is. It is just because FAANG is a cooler-sounding acronym than FAAMG.
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- rolltiide 7y agoHigh growth, tech heavy focus Netflix does very innovative things to get to where it is. Its not that innovate anymore since a lot of the infrastructure is 'easily' replicable, but it is still the only well capitalized and large solo content streamer. All the other ones are #metoo's from incumbent organizations
- lacker 7y agoIt really is just to spell "FAANG" which sounds a bit nefarious. Netflix is by far the smallest of the five; Microsoft is a lot larger than Netflix by market cap.
- LAMike 7y agoYouTube has a space in LA already, it's pretty huge. Maybe they're expanding it
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoWest side pavilion is going to supersede the Venice/Sahara Monica R&D office I’ve heard, not sure if YouTube would, though it isn’t that far from their Venice beach office already.
- clairity 7y agoyup, more info on that: https://urbanize.la/post/google-lease-entirety-westside-pavilion-redevelopment https://urbanize.la/post/google-lease-entirety-westside-pavi... and amazon is moving into culver city: https://urbanize.la/post/fresh-renderings-amazons-future-culver-city-home https://urbanize.la/post/fresh-renderings-amazons-future-cul...
- therealx 7y agoI'm super glad to hear that, its crazy to have a deadmall like that in LA.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoIt wasn’t dead when I was living there in 2016. It failed really quickly, actually.
- jaaron 7y agoMy understanding is that YouTube is staying in the newer offices in Playa Vista and it's the Venice offices that are moving over to Westside Pavilion. This is still a couple years away.
- azernik 7y agoWe've been spoiled by Bay Area news sites that actually know what they're talking about when it comes to software companies.
- benologist 7y agoIt might be because these companies are investing in movies, tv shows and games because movies, tv shows and games can bring home those sweet, disproportionate billion dollar paydays.
- notatoad 7y agoI think FAANG-type is defined a bit further down, he's talking about companies that have enough power and/or hype that they drive real estate demand in their surrounding areas. >“The Netflix, Google and Amazons of the world are not going to their service providers,” he said. “Their service providers are going to them.” It all seems pretty meaningless though. This is just a PR piece for CBRE, not any sort of journalism.
- choonway 7y agoYou can add Boeing and Seattle to that list.
- metildaa 7y agoEh, Boeing has huge scale, but they havw a worse version of Amazon's recruiting problem. Terrible work environment for most employees (unless you like knuckledragger drivel), poor quality work by other teams being swept under the rug by managers, and large relocation/sign on bonuses being dangled in front of potential employees for year long commitments post-move.
- Animats 7y agoGoogle is not typically known as a "content creator" business. Google is trying to get into gaming.[1][2][3] More from the infrastructure/back end side than the user-facing side, but they at least produce some demo games to show off the infrastructure. [1] https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/gaming/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/gaming/ [2] https://improbable.io/blog/google-partnership-pr https://improbable.io/blog/google-partnership-pr [3] https://developers.google.com/games/ https://developers.google.com/games/
- Dylan16807 7y agoA couple demo games for their gaming infrastructure ambitions are basically irrelevant. You can make a demo game with 100 man-hours.
- Animats 7y agoThe point is that Google has buildings in LA full of people working on their gaming infrastructure. So they look like a content creator from a real estate perspective.
- Dylan16807 7y agoWhy does working on gaming infrastructure make them look like a content creator, moreso than working on their compute cloud or their search engine?
- Lammy 7y agoI take "FAANG-type tenants" to mean "Companies that aspire to FAANG levels of prestige" in an implicitly negative way, as in companies that are chasing the visible adornments of very successful companies such as open offices, micro kitchens, interns trying and failing to stay upright on Hoverboards, etc, instead of the things that actually made those companies successful. FAANG offices all have a particular "look" and that look is currently very trendy.
- ikeyany 7y agoYouTube's studios are in LA. I imagine Netflix and Amazon have studios there as well.
- cjhanks 7y agoRandom guess, but I would assume the majority is Amazon. They are purchasing land in urban centers and repurposing them as shipping hubs. Both to expand their Network, and to improve their last mile delivery. The others afaik are simply buying office space in urban areas.
- zyx321 7y agoSince when are these companies "content creators"? They operate platforms such as Twitch and YouTube that the content creators use, but you wouldn't call Wal-Mart an "electronics manufacturer".
- mrosett 7y agoThe title of this post (at time of commenting) is exceptionally misleading. A more accurate one is "Landlords rip out escalators and walls to attract tenants like Google and Netflix", which is the one from the original article.
- sctb 7y agoThanks, we've updated it from the submitted “Google and Netflix Turning Real Estate Market in LA into the Bay Area” to the original (edited for length).
- jfengel 7y agoIt does sound like the "LA" part of the original title is kind of important, though. It's implicit in the source (latimes.com), but the architectural details are only part of the story. The real point of the story, as I see it, is that these architectural changes are happening in Los Angeles. That's a new development in the type of business that LA caters to: it motivates architectural changes, and will motivate all kinds of other changes as the people actually occupy those buildings.
- sctb 7y agoI think you're probably right that the domain is too subtle for this point—we've added an “LA”.
- gowld 7y agoIt's still a confusing title. The article is about retail conversions, which of course require cutting the interior to remove useless parts. The interior space of the old buildings isn't the important part, except for one quote by the escalator hater.
- awinder 7y ago“The idea of getting on escalators like you did in the 1950s and ’60s is not happening,” said executive Bert Dezzutti of Brookfield Office Properties. “People desire to move around and be untethered. You’re not using lazy old escalators anymore.” This can’t seriously be a thing right, this is the story of 1 crazy man and his vendetta against escalators and not an entire community gone mad...
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- lozenge 7y agoWho wants an escalator in an office building with more than two floors? They are literally designed to make it take longer to reach your destination than an elevator.
- jrockway 7y agoI worked at Google NYC for 6 years. It's a 16 story building that was designed to be a freight transfer terminal. The elevators were very very slow. It was often significantly faster to walk up 10 flights of stairs than to wait. I would have killed for an escalator. (In all fairness to the facilities team, they built new banks of elevators on a very regular basis. Still slow, depending on which floor you wanted to go to. But I'm sure it's much better now.)
- slang800 7y agoIt's a tradeoff between latency and throughput... Also, there are some small advantages for people who are claustrophobic, and in cases when the power goes down.
- dqpb 7y agoI don't know, if the alternative is elevators, that can quickly become a bottleneck shit show.
- crazygringo 7y ago> One perhaps surprising trend is the excommunication of escalators, which were long considered luxurious amenities. “The idea of getting on escalators like you did in the 1950s and ’60s is not happening,” said executive Bert Dezzutti of Brookfield Office Properties. “People desire to move around and be untethered. You’re not using lazy old escalators anymore.” I never though about it before but that actually is a fascinating cultural shift. White-collar workers today spend so much time sitting, and are so conscious of health and wanting to be active, that escalators aren't a luxury -- they're the antithesis of a healthy lifestyle. If buildings necessarily express the values of the people in them, well values have changed. It's the age of Fitbit and walking around dense city centers and walking up stairs -- not being sedentary and driving and just standing on an escalator. (While elevators are still mandated for disabilities, which escalators were never good for anyways.)
- steve19 7y agoI will belive that when I see workers walking up stairs, not just the type A's looking at their Apple Watch step counter, instead of escalators ;) I think its mostly landlords wanting to look like office buildings not retail space. YouTube is quite proud of the employee-only slide they have between two floors (might be gone, haven't visited in a couple of years)
- crazygringo 7y agoI think, like many fitness things, it's actually as much of a discipline thing as anything else. When we're confronted with an escalator next to stairs, we take the escalator out of laziness, even though we wish we didn't. But we'd actually prefer there not to be an escalator at all, so we'd have to walk. Same thing as when you choose not to keep snacks at your desk because you know you'll eat them. We prefer an environment that nudges us in the right direction, precisely because we don't always have the discipline we wish we had.
- clairity 7y agoi actually prefer a wide escalator so i can walk up/down (and around the standers) and get both speed and a workout. =)
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/dieqU http://archive.is/dieqU
- thanatos_dem 7y agoThanks for this. Drives me crazy that LA Times hard blocks all website access if you’re in incognito mode
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- jdsully 7y agoInteresting that escalators are considered passé now. Bloomberg was incredibly proud of their curved escalators and pointed them out repeatedly.
- logfromblammo 7y ago~From playing Dwarf Fortress, I learned that ramps are better at reducing pathing collisions than stairs. If these buildings take out their escalators and put in stairs or elevators instead, they might not see visible congestion, but their framerate will drop into the basement.~ But seriously, this is mainly about shopping mall conversions. I have only ever worked in a partially-converted shopping mall for a few months, but I thought it was great office space compared to floors in purpose-built office buildings, mainly because it still partially functioned as a mall. There was a sandwich restaurant, a movie theater, and a motor vehicles branch, and it had a public transit bus stop. The biggest problem was a lack of windows and natural light. I would argue that keeping the gross features of the interior space intact--such as the escalators--would make a better office space, as the mall was already designed to be attractive to visitors and move them around efficiently. Besides that, the conference rooms have to be named after some of the former mall tenants. That's an unbreakable rule.
- reaperducer 7y agoLA landlords rip out escalators, walls to attract tenants like Google, Netflix That's nothing. In Chicago, a real estate developer transformed a 10-story-tall refrigerator into offices for Google. https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2013/06/17/meatpacking-district-warehouse-tower-quickly-becoming-a-chic-loft-office-building/ https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2013/06/17/meatpacking-d...
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