BuzzFeed walks away from Arts District move

Planned remodel of the Ford factory at 7th and Santa Fe.

For whatever reason, BuzzFeed will not be moving its Los Angeles newsroom and video studios to the Arts District corner of 7th Street and Santa Fe Avenue. Months of discussions, which went public in August, did not lead to a deal to take over the former Ford Model-T factory now being reenvisioned by San Francisco's Shorenstein Properties, says Hannah Miet, real estate reporter for the LA Business Journal:

BuzzFeed, which recently received a $200 million investment from NBCUniversal that valued the firm at roughly $1.5 billion, is still looking for a space that will suit the company’s planned expansion in Los Angeles.

Meantime, employees in BuzzFeed’s video department, dubbed BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, will relocate from the 40,000 square feet the company takes at Kilroy Realty Corp.’s campus on De Longpre Avenue across from the ArcLight Cinema complex, a BuzzFeed spokeswoman said.

Starting in mid-October, the roughly 230 employees comprising BuzzFeed’s editorial video team in Los Angeles will occupy the entirety of Siren Studios’ roughly 52,000-square-foot media campus at 6063 W. Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, the spokeswoman said. BuzzFeed and Siren Studios declined to comment on the terms of the deal.

Though the deal with Shorenstein has fallen out, BuzzFeed is still said to be in the market for a substantial amount of space, and there are few large properties able to accommodate it. Among the potential options are the Pen Factory in Santa Monica, the Brickyard in Playa Vista and the Pacific Design Center’s Red Building in West Hollywood. The Colorado Center in Santa Monica is also an option now that Riot Games and Yahoo Inc. have moved out.

Until a space is found that is large enough for the planned expansion of the company and, possibly, a consolidation of its four local offices, the other three BuzzFeed offices in Los Angeles will not move, the spokeswoman said.

The company takes 22,000 square feet of office space at Kilroy’s Sunset Media Center at 6255 W. Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood for its branded content department. The company’s editorial office is on 7323 Beverly Blvd. in L.A.’s Fairfax District. BuzzFeed’s sales team also takes 1,900 square feet in a single-tenant office building at 608 Main St. in Venice.

The former Ford Motor Company assembly plant is across the street from Bread Lounge and Stumptown Coffee, and just around the corner from Bestia.