|
Santa Monica is considered the
second largest of the nine office submarkets in the
West Los Angeles office market. The City offers
approximately 100 office buildings, encompassing
over 7.6 million square feet, and it continues to
attract businesses, which can be evidenced by the
lowest vacancy rate in several years. The City’s
inventory is concentrated in four primary
“sub-areas” of the City: the Special Office
District at the eastern edge of the City along
Olympic, Colorado and Broadway; Downtown;
Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards; and the area
around Santa Monica Airport.
Santa Monica is home to a wide
array of businesses and industries, however, five
industries make up an astounding 49% of employers in
the City. Professional and technology services
account for the majority of that total with 18%,
followed by health care services, performing arts
and sports, entertainment, and finally the real
estate industry. Although the professional and
technology sector is the leading employer in
Santa Monica, no discussion of
the area would be complete without mentioning the
tremendous influx in recent years of entertainment,
high-tech and software companies.
Santa Monica’s comparative
advantages in the office market include the City’s
attractive physical, shopping, dining, hotel,
cultural and residential characteristics along with
its supply of campus style office parks and older
industrial buildings suitable for adaptive reuse to
“creative space”. In addition, Santa Monica offers
relatively easy access to other Westside locations
and downtown Los Angeles. Key concentration
sectors in Santa Monica include high-technology,
information, motion and television production and
distribution, music recording, health services along
with a supply of other related professional
services.
According
to the Grubb & Ellis 2007 Real Estate Forecast of
the Westside Office Market, Santa Monica is
forecasted to continue as a highly desirable office
market in West Los Angeles. Figure 5.3 illustrates
the office market vacancy rate and rent trends in
Santa Monica from 1997 to 2005. More recent data
published by Grubb & Ellis indicates that asking
rates have increased 22.3% from $3.18 3rd quarter
2005 to $3.89 3rd quarter 2006 with a vacancy of
6.6% 3rd quarter 2006.
Source: Colliers-Seeley; HR&A, Inc.
City of Santa Monica,
Opportunities and Challenges July 2005
[ Table of Contents for
Demographic & Economic Profile ]
This page was last modified on
03/06/2007
|
