New Tenants Breathe Life Into Design Center

LOS ANGELES-Several new tenants have leased a combined 75,000 sf of showroom space at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, breathing more new life into a fabled project that was facing foreclosure just a year ago.

Nearly a dozen new tenants have moved into the 16-acre Westside development. Three others–high-end furnishing retailer Beacon Hill, outdoor and garden furniture boutique Janus et Cie and kitchen-and-bath designers Euroconcepts–have expanded their existing space over the past few months.

In a complicated sale that involved a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, an East Coast group that includes Charles S. Cohen of New York and the Cheslock Bakker Opportunity Fund acquired the 1.2-million-sf furniture and design showroom project last year in a deal valued at about $157 million. The group also pledged to spend tens of millions to renovate the development, nicknamed “the blue whale” for the mammoth blue building that anchors the complex.