The 'Hole Building' Takes Shape

2000 Avenue of the Stars Has a Breakthrough Look

By Greg Aragon

Gensler's design for a 12-story, Class A office building in Century City is dominated by a dramatic 100-ft. by 100-ft. "hole" in the building. The cut-out creates an awesome view from the street and, perhaps more importantly, smaller floor plates for tenants of the 720,000-sq.-ft. structure.

When the 2000 Avenue of the Stars office complex in Century City opens in October, it will offer picturesque panoramas for its tenants and an unusual visual from the street.

Tenants on the upper floors of the 12-story building will have vivid views of nearby skyscrapers and the Hollywood Hills, while pedestrians will get a close-up look of a huge "hole" in a large section of the building's elevation. The 100-ft.-wide by 100-ft.-high rectangular hole enables passersby to see through a major chunk of the 720,000-sq.-ft. building.

Efficient Floor Plates

Rob Jernigan, a principal with the Santa Monica office of Gensler, the project's architect, said the cut-out gives the building a bizarre look and breaks the structure's floor plates up into smaller sizes that are easier to lease.

"[People] like a smaller floor plate, so by poking a hole [in the building], it really turned it into two towers," he said. "It made 80 percent of the floor plates typical size."

The building's floor plates break down in this manner: Three 70,000-sq.-ft. floor plates on the highest floors (above the cut-out) and 16 floor plates measuring about 28,000-sq.-ft. each (eight plates on either side of the cut-out).

The cut-out, which measures 100-ft. by 100-ft., begins above a two-story lobby and continues up to the 10th floor.

"I think Gensler has created a striking architectural statement for the project," said Brad Cox, a principal in the Los Angeles office of Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co., the project's developer.

In addition to the main office tower, the $300-million project will include a separate 10,000-sq.-ft. cultural center, retail/café promenade, 3.75-acre landscaped park and 45,000 sq. ft. of restaurants. The restaurants and park will be open to the public.

New York-based Entertainment Center LLC owns the project and the 2.3-million-sq.-ft. Century Plaza Towers, two triangular-shaped, 44-story office buildings immediately west of the jobsite.

advertisement

Just west of Beverly Hills, Century City is a small but dense collection of high- and mid-rise office buildings. Many tenants are law firms and investment-related businesses. It also is home to an outdoor shopping mall/cineplex and the Century Plaza Hotel.

The development gets its name from its address: 2000 Avenue of the Stars, which, when combined with Plaza Towers, encompasses an entire city block, bordered by Constellation Boulevard, Century Park East and Olympic Boulevard. The project is across the street from the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel & Spa and the Century City Shopping and Marketplace is a block to the northwest.

The 2000 Avenue of the Stars complex replaces the 30-year-old former ABC Entertainment Center, which had been vacant since 2000 and was demolished before construction of 2000 Avenue of the Stars began in April 2004. The entire project is currently about 80 percent complete, with about 45 percent of the office space is pre-leased.

Cox said that Creative Artist Agency of Beverly Hills, the world's largest talent agency, has signed on to lease more than 200,000 sq. ft. for its new corporate headquarters. Other major tenants will include Comerica Bank, which is leasing 45,000 sq. ft. for a new branch and its Southern California headquarters office, and Fidelity Investments, which is leasing 10,000 sq. ft. for a "flagship" investor center.

Decked in exterior sky-blue glass and metal panels, the development is being constructed above a six-level subterranean parking garage. The 6,000-space lot, the largest underground parking structure west of the Mississippi, was built at the same time as the ABC center and covers six acres per level.

Gene Watanabe, Gensler's design principal for the project, said the primary objective was to create "a building with a strong identity, but one that doesn't compete with, or detract from the landmark Century Plaza Towers," the two 44-story towers that share the 14-acre property with 2000 Avenue of the Stars."

Construction Challenges

Art Kozinski, project director with the Los Angeles office of Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co., said removing and reconstructing foundations below an existing structure while supporting both the new building and the garage, was one of the project's most difficult tasks.

"We had to jack up the columns below the existing parking structure about three quarters of an inch," said Kozinski said. "[Then] we removed the existing footing and reconstructed it and essentially lowered the building back on it."

He said the new building now sits on about 100 100-ft.-long columns that run all the way through the parking structure to a new foundation at the bottom.

"If you can imagine [the tower] standing on six-story stilts attached to an occupied parking structure, with footing below that, then this is how the new building looks structurally," said Greg Ames, Trammel Crow assistant project manager.

The project, along with the 2.3- million-sq.-ft. Century Plaza Towers, is owned by New York-based Entertainment Center LLC. John A. Martin & Associates of Los Angeles is serving as structural engineer; the Santa Monica office of Syska Hennessy Group is the MEP engineer;, and SWA Group of Sausalito is landscape architect.