New VFX Firm Magnopus Sets Up in Downtown L.A.

A version of this story first appeared in the Jan. 31 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Magnopus, a newly created company founded by Oscar-winning visual effects artists Ben Grossman and Alex Henning (Hugo), along with Rodrigo Teixeira, has just signed a five-year lease for creative offices in downtown L.A.'s PacMutual building.

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"We looked in Santa Monica, Venice and Culver City, but downtown L.A. offers us the ability to connect with other companies and clients around the globe," says Teixeira, who describes the company as a "visual research firm that does work in the entertainment industry and beyond."

Grossman, nominated this year for Star Trek Into Darkness, and his fellow founders along with 20-plus employees, will occupy a 5,000-square-foot space on the penthouse level. Other tenants in the Beaux Art structure, where Showtime's House of Lies is filmed, include women's clothing retailer Nasty Gal, which has 60,000-square-foot offices.

"We've done 51 leases in here and Magnopus is the first entertainment tenant," says Industry Partners agent Carle Pierose, who handles all brokerage and marketing of the building for owner Realty Rising. Pierose says the Magnopus move is indicative of downtown L.A.'s growing appeal for creative office tenants.

"A lot of knowledge workers are living in Silver Lake and Los Feliz, and downtown's amenity base has finally caught up to what the entertainment industry expects for doing business. Right now you can get leases for $3 a square foot here, while Santa Monica is more like $6. But that could change as downtown catches up."

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SBE to Occupy Variety's Wilshire Blvd. Offices

SBE, founded by nightlife and hotel impresario Sam Nazarian, will lease the top two floors of 5900 Wilshire, reports the Los Angeles Times, leaving its current offices near Beverly Blvd. and Fairfax, and moving into the Variety space. The trade magazine’s sign, which was removed last November from the top of the building, will be replaced with an SBE sign by spring.

Nazarian and his 100 employees will be in good company in their new 30,000-square-foot digs: Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute and Millennium Entertainment also have offices in the William J. Pereira-designed, 31-story building, which is located across the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (Pereira designed that original campus as well.)

SBE, which operates hotels, restaurants and nightclubs such as SLS, Katsuya and Hyde, is planning a second SLS hotel in Los Angeles in the Grand Ave. development on Bunker Hill.

Variety will relocate to Penske’s corporate headquarters in Westwood.

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Comcast Unveils $1.2 Billion Philadelphia Skyscraper Proposal

Comcast has unveiled a $1.2 billion proposal for a new 59-story skyscraper to house its corporate headquarters in Philadelphia.

Construction on the 1,121-foot-high building, designed by Norman Foster of Foster + Partners, is expected to begin this summer and be completed by late 2017.

"This is yet another historic moment for Comcast," said Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts in a statement. "We continue to be proud to call Philadelphia our home, and are thrilled to build a world-class media, technology and innovation center right in the heart of the city, to bring NBC 10 and Telemundo 62 downtown, and to create thousands of jobs and further drive economic activity in the region."

Once completed the skyscraper, titled The Comcast Innovation and Technology Center, will rank among the tallest buildings in the United States. In addition to housing Comcast, the building will house a 200-room Four Seasons hotel.

"If you want a city behind your project, a hotel is a great way to get through the entitlement process," Paul Habibi, a real estate developer and professor at the Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA, tells The Hollywood Reporter. "Cities want the tax revenue. And attaching an architect like Norman Foster to the project is another way to win hearts and minds during approvals processes."

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