Building a New Center for Elite of Hollywood
Georges Marciano, the successful Guess jeans guru-turned-real estate mogul, has fashioned a drab, nine-story bank building in Beverly Hills into one of the city’s most sought-after office spaces among the Hollywood elite.
Michael Ovitz has signed a 10-year lease for the sixth floor of the building on the northwest corner of Beverly Drive and Wilshire Boulevard--just blocks from the former super-agent’s onetime home, Creative Artists Agency.
Imagine Films partners Brian Grazer and Ron Howard are relocating their headquarters from Century City to new offices on the seventh floor of the Marciano-owned building, known as Wilshire Beverly Center.
Country and western sensation Garth Brooks houses his songwriting company, Red Strokes, there.
Las Vegas billionaire Kirk Kerkorian planted his MGM Grand marketing offices on the premises, and he would have taken an office for himself but for his dislike of high-rise buildings.
“It’s the chicest place in town,” said former Universal Pictures Chairman Tom Pollock. He and his partner, director Ivan Reitman, have rented office space for their new Santa Barbara-based Montecito Picture Co.
Other Hollywood tenants include producers Dick and Lili Zanuck, ex-Warner Bros. production chief Bill Gerber, industry veteran Tony Thomopolis and such manager/producers as Judy Hofflund and Gavin Palone, Barry Krost and Doug Chapin, Carol Bodie Productions, Lou Pitt and former United Talent Agency partner Marty Bauer.
Financial tenants like Esther Berger and Mellon Bank Private Placement specialize in investments for entertainment clients, while investment banker Ken Lipper has produced such movies as “Wall Street” and “City Hall.”
“We’re 100% full and we have a waiting list,” said Colin Levy, Marciano’s business manager and chief financial officer of Wilshire Beverly Center. “The beauty is that everybody knows everybody in this building.”
Just as some restaurants such as the Grill or Mortons become hot spots for the Hollywood crowd, so it appears this particular building has taken on a certain cachet among industry types that has others in the entertainment business clamoring to get space there.
Marciano--the man responsible for putting stone-washed denim on the map in the early 1980s--has designed it that way.
“We call him ‘the concierge,’ ” says Ovitz, who has temporary digs in the building while construction continues on what will be a suite of offices for his planned entertainment company. (In addition to the entire sixth floor, Ovitz has requested to take over the floor below if it becomes available.)
“He’s trying hard to please everyone in the building,” added Ovitz, who has known Marciano for seven years and advised him about who’s who when it came to prospective entertainment tenants.
Marciano, a press-shy 51-year-old magnate who retired from the apparel business three years ago, has since snapped up some valuable residential and commercial real estate in Beverly Hills. The car and art lover, who sold his 40% stake in the Guess empire to his three brothers for about $220 million, is sparing no expense to ensure that his high-profile tenants not only are comfortable but are ensconced in the kind of style to which they’re accustomed.
To date, Marciano estimates he’s spent between $12 million and $15 million for renovations, with more work planned.
How much is he ultimately willing to fork out to please his Hollywood clientele?
“As much as it takes to make it first-class,” said Marciano. “My standard is top-of-the-line.”
There are fresh flowers in all the restrooms. A bucket of umbrellas in the lobby when it rains. A specially built post office station in the underground garage. A 50-seat executive screening room is being installed on the first floor. An exclusive high-end health club and spa will occupy a 40,000-square-foot space in an adjacent building. A trendy new cafe/bakery was built next door to replace the office building’s formerly downscale eatery on the sixth floor.
“It’s like having an office at the Ritz Carlton,” said Bill Gerber, whose new production company, Populuxe Entertainment, is headquartered at the building. “There will probably be room service someday.”
And then there’s the collection of art, which would make any collector envious.
A torso by Joan Miro sits in front of the building. The lobby features two chairs by Robert Rauschenberg, sculptures by Bernar Venet and John Chamberlain, and a print of “Standard Oil” by Edward Ruscha.
The hallways are lined with the works of such artists as Frank Stella, Sam Francis, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenberg and Rauschenberg.
Even the underground parking lot looks more like a repository for exhibiting art than for parking. Prints by such contemporary artists as Jonathan Borofsky and James Rosenquist grace the walls.
Marciano has commissioned Borofsky to create a 50-foot-high steel tube sculpture of “Man With a Briefcase” that will frame the entrance of the building.
Those who know him describe Marciano as colorful. They call him visionary, creative and generous, as well as shrewd and ruthless when it comes to business.
He was born in French Algeria and raised in Marseille, the son of a third-generation rabbi. He and his three brothers took the apparel industry by storm in the 1980s with the phenomenal success of Guess, which they founded in 1981 and grew to a $500-million empire that included a jeans business, a line of women’s sportswear, posh stores and licensing operations that placed the Guess name on watches, swimsuits, sunglasses, fragrances and children’s clothes.
Guess engaged in a highly public and bitter legal feud with rival jeans maker Jordache after the Marcianos sold a half-interest in their company to the Nakash brothers.
The battle mushroomed into a host of lawsuits and federal investigations on both sides, costing the parties $80 million in legal expenses before the wrangling was settled in 1990 with full ownership of Guess restored to the Marcianos.
There was also infighting among the brothers themselves, which has since been resolved.
Those disputes left Marciano leery of the press, and he doesn’t want to talk about those bittersweet days.
But ask him about his new life as a Beverly Hills real estate mogul and gatekeeper of the hottest Hollywood building around, and Marciano’s eyes light up.
“I love it,” he said, impeccably dressed in a pinstripe shirt and suit.
In 1994, Marciano paid $28 million to a consortium of foreign banks to buy the entire block of Beverly Drive from Wilshire Boulevard to Dayton Way--which includes Wilshire Beverly Center.
“It was in very bad shape,” said Marciano, who spruced up what had been considered a doomed location in the otherwise posh area.
Marciano imported French limestone to create a classy facade for his other incoming tenants along Beverly, which will include an exclusive sports club and a major toy store for the 20,000-square-foot corner building, now operating as a bank, at Beverly and Dayton.
In an interview this week at his eighth-floor office, Marciano said, “I like the atmosphere of having entertainment industry and investment banking tenants.” It’s very important for him that “they feel extremely comfortable. . . . I’m very hands-on and people don’t have to make an appointment to see me. My door is always open.”
As hot as the building is, Marciano’s tenants are paying from $2.50 to $3.25 a square foot in rent, which, according to Nick Christensen, a vice president at CB Richard Ellis, a commercial real estate firm in Beverly Hills, is “right smack within the market range” for the area.
Asked whether Hollywood types get cranky if things don’t go just right, Marciano shrugged it off.
“If something goes wrong, we take care of it immediately,” said Marciano, who admits to always having been enchanted by Hollywood.
“Coming from France, there’s a natural fascination,” said Marciano, whose eldest son, Matthew, wants to be an actor. The 11-year-old had his debut, a nonspeaking role, in the summer action movie “Deep Impact.”
Now Marciano is getting to see what it’s like to co-habitate with the Hollywood crowd.
