First Financial Plaza Takes Bow in Encino : Six-Story Office Building Sited Conveniently to Key Valley Freeways

First Financial Plaza, a $50-million, six-story, 220,000-square-foot office complex, has been completed at Ventura and Balboa boulevards at the eastern gateway to Encino’s traditional downtown shopping district.

Shearson Lehman Brothers, scheduled to occupy space Monday, will be the first tenant to move into the building, where more than one-third of the space has been committed, according to a spokesman for First Financial Group, the developer.

The multi-angled facade of brick and glass yields many corner offices, with views to the north, east and west, according to Jack Shine, founder and president of First Financial Group. Encino Plaza Partners, consisting of Jack Shine, David Bock and Joel Shine, is the owner of the building.

First Financial Group, which ranked 24th in the 15th annual Los Angeles Times survey of residential building in Southern California, will be based in the building. First Financial reported 1985 sales of $62.8 million for 936 housing units, 839 condominiums and 97 single-family houses.

Solberg & Lowe Architects, Santa Monica, designed the building, with working drawings produced and coordinated by Vitro Architects, Los Angeles. Morley Construction Co., Los Angeles, was the general contractor.

Paul Ellis of First Financial Group, the leasing agent, said that available office space ranges from suites to complete floors of 20,000 to 50,000 square feet. Coast Savings will occupy more than 10,000 square feet of space on the first floor, he added.

Features of the building occupying a four-acre site at the southeast corner of the intersection include a garden courtyard, parking for 750 cars and high-speed elevators, according to Steve Bottfeld of San Diego, coordinator of public affairs for the owners of the building.

He said that another feature of the building is easy access to the Ventura and the San Diego freeways: Balboa Boulevard has both on- and off-ramps to the Ventura Freeway about a mile north of the building and is a popular surface-street route to the Simi Valley-San Fernando Valley Freeway in the north Valley. The San Diego Freeway is about three miles east of the building.