Office Buildings Stepping Up Security Services : Crime: These days, employees who work late want assurance they won’t meet strangers in the corridors and may expect an escort to their cars.

It’s 2 a.m., and you are finally ready to leave work.

The office feels like a cavern. The corridors are dim. The elevator seems to take forever. And the parking garage is barren.

Maybe it’s time to start shopping for new office space.

Today, building security is a topic sure to come up in lease negotiations. Buildings without a comprehensive plan are increasingly shunned by businesses looking to relocate. Tenants are demanding more attention to their safety, and commercial landlords are offering a wide range of security services.

Instead of living with fear, a simple call to the building’s security station can summon an escort to the car. Specially programmed elevators and credit-card-controlled door locks help ensure that unwelcome guests don’t get access to offices.

And cameras watch every exit and corridor for any suspicious activities.

All this technology also presents what a few critics consider a more ominous side.

Some companies have gone so far as to install retina scanners that use an infrared light to “read” a person’s eyes and determine if they are one of the people allowed to enter a particular area.

Every move can be tracked by computer. With doors and elevators that require access codes or cards, it’s easy for building managers and bosses to get a computer printout of who has been where and when. The computer tracks entrances and exits, elevator rides and even trips to the toilet.

Whatever the technology’s implications, demand keeps growing. Last year, the security industry raked in somewhere between $9 billion and $17 billion. About 60% of that was spent on commercial security systems and services, according to the Security Industry Assn. An estimated 1.1 million people are employed in private security.

“It’s playing an ever-increasing role in the leasing of properties,” said Christopher Galante, director of public safety for Heitman Properties Ltd. in Beverly Hills. “Tenants are more aware of it than ever.”

Landlords are required by law to protect tenants from reasonably foreseeable harms. This, said William L. Rinehart, director of corporate security at Tishman West Cos., “has created a burden on property owners to create a secure environment for tenants and visitors.”

Rinehart’s company manages about 30 office buildings, all of which have some sort of security program.

“We deal with very sophisticated tenants, and they’re very conscious of security and safety,” he said. In fact, Rinehart added, he often sits in on lease negotiations so that tenants can query him on the details of how they would be protected if they leased in the building.

Tenants want to know: What systems are in place? How is access controlled? How do guards handle a person’s walking out of a building with office equipment? What kind of training do the guards get? How are the security personnel dressed?

When it comes to deciding on where to move, noted Rinehart, no detail is considered too small.

“Anybody can gain access to the building with a business suit and create mischief,” warned Aydin (Turk) Bircan, president and chief executive officer of ISS Security Services Inc. in downtown Los Angeles. “In the daytime, the office buildings are quite vulnerable.”

Some of the buildings served by ISS include the recently built First Interstate World Center, the garment district’s Cooper Building and Burbank’s Fine Arts Building.

Tenants seek protection from a wide range of undesirables such as disgruntled ex-employees, crazed clients, dishonest office workers and organized groups of thieves, known as “office creepers,” who make their way through whole neighborhoods.

There is a limit, however, to the scope of protection offered by most landlords and the security companies they hire.

Most guards are instructed never to use physical force--that’s left to the law enforcement officers. The guards also very rarely carry guns. Arming the guards is too great a liability for most landlords and security companies.

Besides, said Bircan, “we don’t want a shoot-out at the building.” Instead, most guards walk their rounds unarmed and log their scheduled stops either on paper or with a computerized system.

Mark Hazan, vice president of operations at Trizec Properties Inc. in Encino, doesn’t believe in guns either.

“We would never confront an armed robber,” said Hazan. The role of security is primarily to help protect tenants in case of a fire or earthquake. And, he said, “we don’t want to give the impression of being a maximum security building.”

“You want to develop a tough reputation,” noted Fred Dickey, operations manager for United Security Industries in Santa Monica. Still, he said, his guards do not use force but summon the police.

Tenants in many of Dickey’s buildings have card-key access that automatically keeps track of their comings and goings. Each card is programmed in such a way as to allow access to certain areas at certain times of the day. Employees who are not supposed to be at the office over the weekend, for example, are automatically denied access as soon as they try to use their cards.

Some employees have also been known to arrive at work only to find they have been fired when their access codes to elevators and offices have been deactivated. It has become an increasingly popular strategy with employers who want to make sure a fired employee doesn’t get a chance to steal anything from the company or tamper with computer data. Instead, fired employees make it only as far as a reception desk, where they find their personal belongings packed along with a paycheck.

As sophisticated as these systems get, though, “security can’t be everywhere at once,” said Dickey. “We expect the tenants to tell us when something suspicious is going on.”

Sophisticated equipment also requires sophisticated staff to manage it. Many guards are paid about $8 an hour and have only minimal training. It takes about six to eight hours to prepare for California’s guard exam, reported Dickey. Though most security companies provide more than one day’s training, the limit is about a week.

Finding qualified personnel is a constant problem. “The labor market is bad,” Dickey said. Then, too, most office towers only have a few guards. First Interstate World Center--with about 60 to 70 cameras and 20 guards working the day shift--is a notable exception.

“All the monitoring systems in the world are useless unless people understand what to do,” said Michael R. Collins, executive director of management services for Metropolitan Structures West Inc., the managing partner of California Plaza at Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles.

“We teach our people to notice if behavior is unusual,” he said. “All our staff is part of our security system.”

‘It’s really more of a concierge service,” conceded Collins, adding: “It’s not been demonstrated that there’s much real danger to working in an office building. There are perceived fears, but they’re not as real as people think they are.” Cal Plaza’s six daytime and eight nighttime guards, he said, serve more as a deterrent than anything else.

Businesses that occupy a whole building have long taken responsibility for their own security. Now, businesses in office buildings with many tenants are doing the same. The law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has 65 security people protecting its various offices, reported John Van Valkenburg, the firm’s chief of security.

Attorneys and secretaries alike can be escorted to their cars at late hours; somebody watches the premises over the weekends; computer rooms are guarded, and computer systems are monitored to avoid penetration by hackers.

Skadden, Arps tries to keep its security services very low-key, Van Valkenburg said. “We don’t want a prison environment.”

Tenants--especially lawyers--can’t be too careful these days, advised Bob A. Ortiz, executive vice president at Cushman Realty in downtown Los Angeles.

Among other precautions, he advised, computer and file rooms should be designed and built in such a way that nobody can enter through ventilation ducts or drop ceilings. Companies that don’t take such preventive measures to secure their operations, he said, may be found liable to clients who suffer as a result.

Cushman’s clients are demanding more and more security from the buildings they occupy, Ortiz said. But, he said, “the best security is security you don’t know is there.”

Only in Hollywood would 300 people show up at 8 a.m. on a Friday for the private movie screening of Dick Tracy courtesy of Cushman & Wakefield. It was all part of a June 15 gimmick orchestrated by these commercial brokers to woo some of their clients and raise money for the West Valley Area Police Activity League’s support of the Haven Hills battered women’s shelter in Canoga Park.

“We wanted to do something different from the corporate cocktail party,” said event organizer and Cushman & Wakefield branch manager Bruce Arden. “They’re so boring, don’t you think?”

Last year, the company entertained its prime clients and their families with a screening of Batman.

DEVELOPMENTS Centerpointe La Palma Project Completed Birtcher of Laguna Niguel and Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York recently completed the $40-million third and final phase of Centerpointe La Palma--a 42-acre mixed-use project on the border of Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Included in the 850,000-square-foot development are four free-standing restaurants, two retail complexes, seven-office/R&D; buildings, a 162-room Days Inn hotel and four office buildings ranging from three stories to seven stories in height. The $110-million project was started in 1985 and, according to Birtcher, occupies more than two-thirds of the city of La Palma’s commercially zoned land.

Bowers Perez Associates of Irvine announced the opening of its $25-million Raymond Commerce Center at a 18.7-acre site in Anaheim that once served as a plant for Laura Scudder potato chip operations.

Located at 1525 N. Raymond Ave., the project’s first phase includes 17 buildings that total 235,000 square feet of office and industrial space for sale. A second phase is set to include another 60,000 square feet of small space to be sold as industrial condominiums.

In Corona, developer Nathan J. Leanse of Beverly Hills is completing a 12-acre, $11.8-million light-manufacturing and distribution business park within the Corona Spectrum. The business park includes three buildings totaling 234,460 square feet.

SALES Japanese Pay Top Price for Retail Center

Kowa Real Estate Investment Co. and Sogo Co. Ltd. have agreed to pay what’s probably the highest price per square foot for retail space ever in Southern California.

The Japan-based companies plan to buy an approximately 90% stake in the soon-to-be-completed Two Rodeo Drive Project in Beverly Hills for what the sellers described as “well over $200 million.”

The 135,000-square-foot retail complex is to be sold in two stages by a group of investors that includes San Francisco developer Douglas L. Stitzel, Berisford International of Britain and developer Scott Malkin of New York. Kowa is a subsidiary of the Industrial Bank of Japan; Sogo is said to be Japan’s biggest department store chain.

Mitsui & Co. of Japan has agreed to acquire half of Laguna Niguel-based developer Birtcher for more than $100 million.