Architecture Firms Moving to Downtown L.A.

Architecture firm Perkins & Will will close its Santa Monica and Pasadena offices and consolidate on three floors of a renovated downtown Los Angeles office building.

The Chicago-based firm has leased 34,000 square feet at 617 W. 7th St., a 74-year-old high-rise that was refurbished in 2001 in the hope of luring dot-com tenants.

The collapse of the Internet bubble drastically reduced the number of high-tech firms looking for office space and the building at the northeast corner of 7th and Hope streets has been mostly unoccupied for the last few years.

Perkins & Will is expected to move in by the end of the year, according to real estate brokers at Cushman & Wakefield. The brokerage represented the tenant and landlord Hiro Real Estate Co. Terms of the 10-year lease were not disclosed, but the value would exceed $7 million based on asking rates at the building.

Wirt Design Group Inc., an interior design firm formerly based in Pasadena, recently took 5,000 square feet on the building’s third floor.

Bargain rents and the prospects of an urban revival have prompted several architecture and design firms to move downtown over the last two years.