West Monroe Triples L.A. Office Space in Rare Downtown Expansion

A Chicago-based consulting firm has pulled the trigger on an all-too-rare move these days — an office expansion in Downtown Los Angeles. 

West Monroe, which specializes in business and technology consulting, has inked a 24,750-square-foot lease at the Bloc, a 1.8 million-square-foot complex at 700 South Flower Street. The lease is nearly three times the size of its former 8,702-square-foot digs, according to a West Monroe spokesperson. The building is marketed for lease by CBRE, according to a listing on the brokerage’s website. 

National Real Estate Advisors, Blue Vista Capital Management and former partner the Ratkovich Company purchased the property in 2013 for $241 million, though the latter sold its stake to National Real Estate Advisors in 2018 for an undisclosed sum. 

While unusual, the move to expand in Downtown L.A. comes after West Monroe signed two new leases in San Francisco and Seattle, two other West Coast cities similarly struggling with office vacancy. The firm’s Seattle branch in October expanded to 18,761 square feet at Hana Alternative Asset Management’s Qualtrics Tower in the Emerald City, while its Bay Area office last February expanded to 19,552 square feet at Shorenstein Properties and Blackstone’s 45 Fremont Street tower in San Francisco. 

Brian Paulen, West Monroe’s head of offices and global enterprise services, said the expansions are essentially a bet on the superiority of in-person work even as other companies reduce their office footprints.

“We are making a long-term investment in these markets while others are scaling back because we believe that collaboration is at the heart of effective consulting,” Paulen said in a statement. “These new office spaces are designed to bring people together to innovate and solve our clients’ most complex challenges.”

While office leasing across L.A. did improve at the end of last year, most news coming out of Downtown L.A. is overwhelmingly dominated by shrinking footprints rather than growth. Take for example United Way of Greater Los Angeles, which in November opted to cut its office space downtown by more than a third with a roughly 22,000-square-foot lease at John Hancock Real Estate’s 515 South Figueroa Street. Law firm Hill, Farrer & Burrill likewise signed a 25,000-square-foot lease that same month at Commonwealth Partners’ 515 South Flower Street, shrinking its footprint from 33,000 square feet at the nearby One California Plaza.

Yet the most notable downsize in recent months came by way of the Southern California Gas Company leaving its 52-story namesake tower (which for years was its own can of worms) in September for about 198,000 square feet at CIM Group’s City National 2Cal building just one block away. The utility company’s new digs is about two-thirds the size of its former offices at Gas Company Tower.

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.