Ernst & Young Signs $10M Lease

LA JOLLA, CA-With Downtown San Diego enjoying a renaissance, with residential, retail and office all taking space in the area at record clips, at least one tenant is moving north. Ernst & Young LLP is relocating its Downtown San Diego area office to La Jolla. The Big 4 accounting firm has agreed to a 10-year lease to take 25,646 sf at one of the buildings in the class A office and retail complex known as the Plaza at La Jolla Village. Ernst & Young will occupy space on the third and fifth floors at 4370 La Jolla Village Dr. in a deal valued at $10.8 million.It’s a move that makes sense to the accounting firm, according to a broker who worked on the deal. “There are a lot of different components to the move,” says Cushman & Wakefield’s Downtown Los Angeles senior director Brian D. Ulf. “They looked at where their people live and where their clients live.” While the firm has a strong Downtown San Diego clientele, in the end, more of the firm’s people and business are located north of the city, Ulf tells Globest.com.Ulf adds that Ernst & Young’s space Downtown at 501 West Broadway does not expire until June of this year, but that the firm began looking at alternate space as early as October 2003 to stay ahead of the tightening San Diego office market. “The San Diego marketplace is recognized nationally as one of the best performing markets of 2004,” says Ulf, who, along with A. Brennan Ochs, also of Cushman & Wakefield, and Steve Rosetta, principal at Corporate Real Estate Advisors in San Diego, represented the tenant. Equity Office Properties, the building’s owner, was represented in-house by Bess Wakeman, director of leasing.Ernst & Young’s space is located in a six-building, 17-acre office and retail complex within the UTC/Golden Triangle submarket of North County. The complex includes 815,000 sf of office space, two luxury hotels, two shopping malls and several restaurants. Major tenants include Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch and Charles Schwab.As part of the lease agreement, Equity Office will give Ernst & Young signage space, according to Ulf. “Equity Office agreed to give Ernst & Young six prominent signage locations throughout the project including building and monument signage,” Ulf adds.