Owners of High-Rises Turn Attention to Trash : Conservation: Although now voluntary, recycling is catching on as a way to reduce need for landfill space.
Whoever thought downtown Los Angeles’ commercial developers and building owners would turn into conservationists?
Some of them seem to be doing just that, however, as recycling becomes one of the most important aspects to commercial building management in the 1990s. Earth Day is only the beginning.
Downtown Los Angeles high-rises are leading the way in promoting conservation these days, and the results promise to be nothing less than revolutionary.
At the 1.4 million-square-foot Security Pacific Plaza, for example, Tishman West Management Co. and American Building Maintenance Co. are initiating a program called “Remember: Recycle.”
By recycling 75% of the waste from the building, engineers expect that each year the program will result in recovering 1,070 tons of paper, saving 18,000 trees, 38 million gallons of water used to make 1,070 tons of paper, conserving the equivalent of 2,450 barrels of oil and saving 2,100 cubic yards of disappearing landfill space.
The owners and their tenants will also realize a cost savings as they reduce disposal costs.
Transamerica Center has been able to cut its disposal costs markedly since instituting a similar program last year that includes recovery of glass, paper and aluminum.
Managers of the 1.2 million-square-foot office complex even have sponsored recycling contests for the janitorial staff--offering incentives such as movie tickets, T-shirts and coffee mugs to employees most successful in their recovery efforts.
For now, recycling programs at Security Pacific, Transamerica and a growing list of other downtown office buildings are strictly voluntary.
Building managers who get an early start on recycling hope to avoid more onerous and mandatory regulations that may soon be enacted statewide to comply with California’s Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989. Assembly Bill 939 mandates a 25% reduction in waste going to landfills by 1995 and a 50% reduction by the year 2000.
To be sure, not everyone involved in the commercial real estate industry is thrilled by the prospect of such serious changes in the way Californians dispose of their trash.
Groups such as the Sacramento-based California Business Properties Assn. and National Assn. of Office and Industrial Parks lobbied against many aspects to AB 939. So too did some small building owners who worry that recycling may become very costly.
Builders have also voiced their concerns that the required cuts in landfill dumping will be used by slow-growth proponents as another excuse to stymie development.
And food distributors and restaurants worry that their operations have very little salvageable waste--and that they will be penalized for their inability to markedly reduce the amount of waste they send for burial.
Let’s face it, though, nobody wants a landfill in their back yard. Escalating land prices have also made the prospect of starting new landfills anywhere near Los Angeles a tenuous one at best. Incineration is being discouraged because of its effects on air quality and ozone depletion. And, shipping trash to another state or another country is understandably unpopular with most recipients.
All these factors, coupled with rapidly progressing deforestation and a general depletion of natural resources worldwide, seem to suggest to just about everyone that recycling is imperative.
Such consensus--long a mainstay of the European community--is relatively new to Los Angeles. After all, Sam Yorty campaigned three decades ago for mayor on a platform that promised--and delivered--an end to separating trash for curbside pickups. He has since changed his mind.
For now, the immediate problem with recycling office waste is finding a way to reuse it once it’s been saved.
“Cities and counties will have to develop a market for these materials,” said Chip Clements, president of Hollywood-based environmental firm Clements Engineers Inc.
With businesses now eager to recycle their paper, glass and aluminum, prices for these cast-aways are depressed, making it more difficult to recycle profitably.
Office building owners and tenants are lucky, said Clements, for they generate white paper, which is widely perceived as the most “valuable” trash.
Offices, retail stores, restaurants and other commercial buildings generate about one-third of Los Angeles County’s trash, Clements said. The other two-thirds is divided about evenly between residences and industrial operations. All told, each Californian accounts for about 2,500 pounds of trash every year.
Most offices that are recycling their trash concentrate on reclaiming paper. White paper castoffs are worth about $100 a ton; color paper is worth about one-fourth as much.
That fact alone is encouraging many law firms to stop using yellow legal pads and replace them with white legal pads. Office workers are encouraged to throw so-called wet trash, such as discarded food, in specially marked receptacles, while high-grade white paper is discarded separately to make for easy recovery.
Instead of hauling away the trash to be buried, many haulers are now delivering office trash to companies such as Waste Transfer & Recycling Inc. near East Los Angeles.
Their operation runs nearly 24 hours a day and covers 3 acres--where workers pore over 300 tons of trash a day, saving what they can and sending what can’t be recycled to its final resting place.
“We do anything we can to reduce the amount of trash going to the landfills,” said the company’s president, Arthur Kazarian. His clients include Security Pacific, California Plaza, Bank of America, Arco and a long list of other downtown heavyweights.
Kazarian’s company has been in business since 1933, and he is glad that many office tenants are beginning to take recycling seriously. He worries, however, that “there’s too much happening too fast.”
Businesses all over the city want to recycle, he said, but there just isn’t enough demand yet on the part of industry to make use of all the reclaimed trash. For his company to get up to its capacity of processing 1,500 tons of trash a day, he said, “it’s going to take education.”
“Tenants call me all the time and want to know how they can initiate recycling,” reported Joan Edwards, director of integrated solid waste management at the city of Los Angeles Board of Public Works. Many businesses, however, “fear the complications in administering a program,” he said.
Formerly director of recycling programs and planning at the New York City Department of Sanitation, Edwards is now charged with creating new programs and guidelines for Los Angeles.
Eventually, she said, the city may have to set strict rules for how commercial buildings handle their trash. Until then, she said, “my preference is that the private sector on its own work out how to handle recycling.”
Her advice to building managers is that they first consult their maintenance company or trash hauler about how to get a program going. Recycling centers, paper dealers and the L.A. Conservation Corps are also good sources of information.
Another emerging source of material on the topic is the Building Owners and Managers Assn. (BOMA), which along with Edward’s office, will be sponsoring an educational program in May for owners and managers who are serious about recycling.
“People in commercial real estate are not all ogres,” quipped Roni Gould, a Sherman Oaks-based property management consultant. Her interest in recycling was heightened last year after a trip to the woods of Colorado; she returned to seek out others in L.A. who shared her new-found cause.
At first, recalled Gould, few of her colleagues or clients shared her enthusiasm. That, however, has all changed in just a few months, she said, thanks in large part to the media attention given to Earth Day.
Currently she is working on Security Pacific Plaza’s “Remember: Recycle” program as well as on BOMA’s upcoming educational campaign.
With hundreds of downtown Los Angeles tenants now galvanized to start separating their trash, Gould concluded, “I think that people really do care.”
While Los Angeles businesses gear up to save millions of trees, Security Pacific Development Co. is spending about $200,000 to save one in Sherman Oaks that is 500 years old .
The tree is a 100-foot-high Quercus lobata --better known as a valley oak--and it will be the focal point of the Courtyards Shops of Encino, an 87,500-square-foot retail complex nearing completion on Ventura Boulevard.
The conservation project was designed to comply with a city ordinance that requires the saving of oak trees. Participants included a tree surgeon, horticulturist, certified arborist, landscape consultant, architect and experts from the City’s Street Tree Division.
Tishman, Aoki Start on Osaka Project
Tishman Realty & Construction Co. Inc. of West Los Angeles started work late last month on a $200-million hotel, office and retail complex in Osaka, Japan with Aoki Corp.
Subsidiary Tishman Construction Corp. of Japan will jointly manage construction of the project with Aoki, a leading Japanese contractor and hotel owner.
The mixed-use development is designed by architect Hiroshi Hara and will include a 28-story, 400-room hotel and twin 40-story office towers connected at the top by a bridge-like sky garden.
Tishman and Aoki have worked together on projects since 1984, when they jointly developed the Olympic Centre office building in West Los Angeles.
In early 1988, Tishman and Aoki, along with Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., created yet another joint venture to build the $375-million Walt Disney World Dolphin and Swan Hotel and convention complex next to Epcot Center in Florida. Tishman and Aoki have also expressed an interest in building what would be Japan’s first 100-story building.
Moreno Valley Evolves Into Commerce Center
Moreno Valley, like most of the Inland Empire, is undergoing a transformation. Already Riverside County’s second biggest city with a population of 110,000, the city now begins its transition from just another bedroom community to a bona fide commercial center too.
Two projects typify the changes. Wescon Properties of Irvine is building the city of Moreno Valley’s biggest office project to date. Corporate Plaza is set to include 150,000 square feet of office space in five two-story buildings.
The site totals 13 acres along Heacock Street just north of Alessandro Boulevard. Relatively plentiful and inexpensive land will allow the developer to complete the project for about $11 million.
Big plans are also being completed for more retail to serve the area’s burgeoning population. Homart Development Co. recently signed J.C. Penney as the fourth anchor tenant at its planned Moreno Valley Mall at TownGate.
Homart already has commitments from May Co., The Broadway and Sears to fill a major portion of more than 1 million square feet of planned space. Initial grading work began last September at the site of the old Riverside International Raceway. The mall is a joint venture of Homart, which was founded by Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 1959, and Fritz Duda Co.
The new shopping complex is part of the 590-acre mixed-use TownGate project, located near the Moreno Valley Freeway and Day Street. In addition to a regional shopping center, TownGate will include medical offices, a hospital, school, more than 2,000 residential units and a park.
The first phase of TownGate, already completed, includes TownGate Community Shopping Center, a 400,000-square-foot power center; TownGate Plaza, a 100,000-square-foot office and restaurant center, and 500 single-family residences.
LEASES * Insurer Signs Lease in Universal City Owners of 10 Universal City Plaza have finally signed a tenant for its top two floors--empty since the 35-story tower was completed six years ago.
Chicago-based insurance firm Rollins Burdick Hunter signed a $30-million sublease for a total of 66,000 square feet on three floors for 14 years. Getty Petroleum Corp. was originally set to fill the 742,000-square-foot building’s top two floors; Texaco Oil’s purchase of Getty, however, canceled the move.
The building is owned by subsidiaries of MCA Inc. and Texaco Petroleum. Langdon Rieder Corp. represented the tenant in lease negotiations; while sublessor Texaco Producing Inc. was represented by Cushman & Wakefield of California and Tishman West Cos.
* Landmark Entertainment Group plans to relocate from Hollywood to 46,320 square feet of leased space at The Academy Building, 5200 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood. Bailes & Associates represented Landmark in its $11 million lease, while landlord Academy Venture, was represented by Cushman & Wakefield of California.
* Two more law firms have committed themselves to leases in the soon-to-be-completed Figueroa at Wilshire building in downtown Los Angeles. Houston-based Andrews & Kurth and New York-based Debevoise & Plimpton have signed 10-year leases for 28,000 square feet and 30,000 square feet of office space, respectively, for a total value of about $15 million. Julien J. Studley Inc. represented the tenants in lease transactions, and owner Mitsui Fudosan was represented by Gerald D. Hines Interests.
DEVELOPMENT * Calabasas Center at the Halfway Point Ahmanson Commercial Development Co. is reaching the halfway point on construction of its $52-million Calabasas Commerce Center. Phase I includes two office buildings and two research and development facilities totaling 132,000 square feet. Construction began in June, 1989, and is set for completion at the end of this year; design is by Ware Malcomb Architects Inc. The center is on 18 acres at Las Virgenes Road and the Ventura Freeway.
* Santa Fe Pacific Realty Co. of Brea started construction of its $20-million Pacific Springs industrial, office and retail center on 40 acres at the southeast corner of Slauson and Sorensen avenues in Santa Fe Springs.
Ultimately, the project is designed to total 700,000 square feet of commercial space, including a 240,000-square-foot headquarters and distribution facility that will be leased for 15 years by La Salle Paper. Breton Construction Co. of Irvine is general contractor on the project and design is by Himes, Peters, Mason of Costa Mesa.
* Ingram Paper Co. broke ground recently in City of Industry on a new 350,000-square-foot, $15-million office and distribution center on 13.4 acres of land at the intersection of Valley Boulevard and Azusa Avenue. Occupancy is set for the first quarter of 1991.
* Goldrich & Kest Industries and Sheldon Appel Co. have completed the first phase of South Gate Business and Industrial Park--an $80-million mixed-use commercial center. Recently finished are two industrial buildings totaling more than 170,000 square feet and valued at about $12 million. The developers plan a total of 1.5 million square feet of industrial, office and retail space at South Gate.
* Newport Beach-based SDC Development has completed construction of a $10-million showroom facility at McKinley Freeway Center in Corona, next to the Riverside Freeway and west of McKinley Street.
The 73,000-square-foot facility is situated next to SDC’s 300,000-square-foot Phase I home furnishing center, and alongside the developer’s $35-million McKinley Freeway Industrial Park. Recently completed Phase II is 65% leased to four tenants who plan to occupy it in mid-April.
