“Creative space is the most overused term,” said Jeffrey M. Worthe, president of Worthe Real Estate Group, on the Development, Leasing and Market Experts panel at Allen Matkins' annual View From the Top conference in Beverly Hills. The panel was stacked with developers and investors—Sam Caven of Starwood Capital Group; Derek K. Hunter, Jr., president of Hunter Properties; Christopher Rising, president of Rising Realty Partners; Scott Strafford, principal and co-founder of Strada Investment Group—who all discussed major West Coast markets where they were building “meaningful office” properties.

Rising, who is known for breathing life back into Downtown Los Angeles' historic office stock, echoed the overuse of the term “creative,” and said that they try to create spaces that work with people's lifestyles. “I think creative is overused, but there is a fundamental fact that your employees are working 24-7, so an office has to be more. I think that there needs to be space to break out and have a different experience. It is about collaboration. You need different types of spaces throughout a day,” he said.

Worthe is taking a similar approach. He has three entitled properties in Santa Monica, which is a notoriously difficult area to build. “That community is very organized, and committed to stopping development; so, entitlements take a long time. We are finding building office buildings is becoming more difficult, and that means the value of those buildings are only going to increase. What happens to markets when you can't build meaningful office buildings anymore?”

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Kelsi Maree Borland

Kelsi Maree Borland is a freelance journalist and magazine writer based in Los Angeles, California. For more than 5 years, she has extensively reported on the commercial real estate industry, covering major deals across all commercial asset classes, investment strategy and capital markets trends, market commentary, economic trends and new technologies disrupting and revolutionizing the industry. Her work appears daily on GlobeSt.com and regularly in Real Estate Forum Magazine. As a magazine writer, she covers lifestyle and travel trends. Her work has appeared in Angeleno, Los Angeles Magazine, Travel and Leisure and more.

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