My website:
www.sandralew.com
Playa Vista is the new high tech cluster of the Westside. It's proximity to LAX, the beach, easy access to freeways, and vast amounts of open space are all rare finds thus making it a boom for high tech companies anticipating growth in the future. Meanwhile, its creating a vibrant community of young ambitious professionals. Centering tech's biggest
players in one Southland spot is bringing a cohesion to the L.A. tech
scene that entrepreneurs had long worried wouldn't be attainable in the
sprawling metropolis. Definitely a benefit to Playa Vista and its surrounding areas.
Playa Vista turning into Silicon Valley South as tech firms move in
Yahoo has signed a long-term lease for about 130,000 square feet at the
new Collective campus, which is still under construction in Playa Vista.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
By Andrea Chang and Peter Jamison ; January 17, 2015
First came Facebook and YouTube. Then Microsoft moved in. Google is on
its way. And now Yahoo, too, is joining the high-tech cluster that has
sprouted in Playa Vista.
The burgeoning Westside neighborhood is
fast becoming the Southern California hub of Silicon Valley, with a
growing number of tech companies choosing the relatively undeveloped
area as their gateway to the region's entertainment and media offerings.
As digital entertainment takes off, tech companies say close ties with
Hollywood are more important than ever.
Centering tech's biggest
players in one Southland spot is bringing a cohesion to the L.A. tech
scene that entrepreneurs had long worried wouldn't be attainable in the
sprawling metropolis.
It's also fueling rapid change to the self-contained neighborhood of
more than 6,500 residents. Already, new housing and office complexes,
restaurants and co-working spaces have opened, and more developments —
including an 11-acre retail, residential and office center — are
underway.
Tech firms point to a number of reasons for opening
outposts in Playa Vista. At first, proximity played a major role: The
neighborhood is close to major freeways, the beach and Los Angeles
International Airport. Moreover, there were vast expanses of land yet to
be developed, a rarity in Southern California and a boon for enormous
tech companies anticipating future workforce growth.
Now there's
something more. The rise of Playa Vista tech has created a vibrant
community of young, ambitious employees, and that's attracting related
firms and organizations to the fold. Along a mile-and-a-half stretch,
you can find media companies, ad agencies, university-affiliated
institutes and start-ups working alongside the established tech
juggernauts.
"There's
a herd mentality to the tech industry, so when one guy does something,
everyone else follows," said Michael Pachter, a tech analyst at Wedbush
Securities in Los Angeles.
When YouTube began looking for a
facility in L.A., it struggled to find a complex large enough — until
discovering Playa Vista, said Liam Collins, head of YouTube Space L.A.,
which opened in late 2012.
The YouTube hangar has quickly become a
gathering place for the business community there. It began hosting
regular happy hours two years ago, with some 25 people showing up. Now
400 people swing by "and many are just walking over," Collins said.
"We
found what we needed logistically in this neighborhood, and now we hope
to be a catalyst for more like-minded companies and people to come," he
said. "Our model is really built on the idea that bringing creative
people together will enhance the work product of everyone involved.
Having a creative, vibrant community is critical for our success, and
it's heartening to see that grow in the last couple of years."
Tech
companies and their typically well-paid, highly educated employees are
plum tenants for the city and for commercial real estate brokers, who
have been pulling out all the stops to get leases signed.
Los
Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti heavily wooed Yahoo, which announced
Thursday that it would move its Santa Monica operations to Playa Vista.
He has been aggressively pushing for the city to become a
tech-entertainment powerhouse and has been enticing companies over the
Santa Monica border with attractive perks.
The plan to lure Yahoo
began last year, when the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company started
looking beyond Santa Monica, where it had been for a decade, for a
bigger office complex.
Yahoo considered and passed over several
other potential sites, including the Bloc development in downtown L.A.
and the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, according to city
officials familiar with the process.
In
November, Garcetti sent a letter to Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer
offering a "menu of incentives and resources," including a three-year
business tax exemption and "white glove service" to ensure that the
build-out of the campus would proceed quickly and that the company's
dealings with the city would be fast-tracked.
"The consolidation
of your employees into one singular campus in the city would help
elevate L.A. as [a] tech leader, ensuring that we're able to retain
quality engineers and attract and grow local funding sources," Garcetti
wrote in the Nov. 20 letter, obtained by The Times. "Personally, I view
this move as paramount to our continued success."
The
pitch worked. Yahoo signed a long-term lease for about 130,000 square
feet at the soon-to-open Collective campus in Playa Vista. The move,
expected this fall, will bring at least 400 jobs from Yahoo's current
location, with space to accommodate growth. Internet companies generally
set aside 200 square feet per employee, so Yahoo's Playa Vista presence
could expand to 650 employees.
Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Ken
Goldman said the new office better matched the company's space
requirements and would enable it to be closer to the "ambience of this
area" and its talent pool.
The deal was a blow to Santa Monica,
which had been poised to be the region's tech epicenter. But
entrepreneurs there have long complained of traffic congestion, high
office rents and cramped quarters with little to no room for growth.
"Things
have gotten a little too cozy at Riot HQ in Santa Monica," the video
games company wrote in a blog post announcing that it would relocate to
West L.A. this spring. "As we've grown, we've squeezed ourselves into
every cranny and we've spread across multiple floors and buildings."
The
short migration from Santa Monica into L.A. has led to a rivalry
between the two cities, with each jostling to become the premiere place
for tech in the Southland.
Los Angeles "is just taking our overflow," Santa Monica Mayor Kevin McKeown said. "The excitement is in Santa Monica."
McKeown
is confident that the Colorado Center space vacated by Yahoo will soon
be grabbed by another company, and noted that the city was willing to
work with businesses seeking to expand. Still, he acknowledged that
Santa Monica doesn't have the space like Playa Vista to accommodate
large concentrations of workers.
Garcetti, meanwhile, said he was tired of watching his city lose out to its next-door neighbors.
"L.A. city will get its fair share," he said. "That absolutely is important to me."
Whether it's L.A. or Santa Monica, the region's tech sector is thriving.
The
Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. recently released a
report showing that the area has more high-tech jobs (368,600) than
Boston-Cambridge, Santa Clara County and New York City. The direct
high-tech workforce generated $32 billion in wages in 2013, accounting
for 16.8% of all wages paid in L.A. County, the report said.
As more start-ups have emerged in the area, venture capitalists have followed.
In
the Los Angeles metro region, the total amount of equity financings for
venture-backed companies jumped sharply last year, up 44% to $2.3
billion across 146 deals, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.
An
ever-expanding tech force in Playa Vista — Google last month spent
nearly $120 million on 12 acres that it will develop in the coming years
— will further bolster the region's tech environment and the economy
overall, said Wedbush's Pachter.
"Anything
that diversifies the economy is great for L.A., anything that creates
high-paying jobs is great for L.A. and anything that hires educated
people is great for L.A."
Source:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-silicon-valley-south-20150118-story.html#page=1
