BEVERLY HILLS, CA-Two multi-floor leases in the former Hilton Hotel headquarters building announced earlier this month demonstrate that the mystique of Beverly Hills continues to hold for talent agencies and other entertainment firms.

The latest demonstration of the city’s allure is the 120,000-square-foot lease signed by talent and literary agency UTA in the building that served as the Hilton Hotels headquarters. UTA is moving out of existing space in the city’s Golden Triangle area.

Playboy Enterprises Inc. also announced it would take 45,000 square feet in the same building. The company plans to consolidate its existing operations in Glendale and Santa Monica in the new location.

Representing UTA in lease negotiations were Andrew Thau of UTA, Michael DeSantis of Cushman & Wakefield’s Century City office, and lawyer Andrew Friedman of Beverly Hill's Friedman & Associates.

In the Playboy lease, Eric Olofson of Cushman & Wakefield represented the tenant. Landlord Tishman Speyer represented itself in both transactions.

Tishman acquired the building in the Beverly Hills Civic Center area earlier this year for an undisclosed sum. The New York-based developer currently owns four office buildings in Beverly Hills, including the 45,000-square-foot Live Nation headquarters immediately adjacent to the UTA Plaza. 

The allure of West LA in general--and Beverly Hills in particular--for the entertainment industry was not lost on the owner, who targeted entertainment firms when marketing the building earlier this year.

Although vacancy rates in Beverly Hills were in the soft 15% range prior to the two leases, Tishman Speyer felt confident they could land big tenants in the former Hilton building, according to Mark Laderman, a regional director in the company’s New York office. “Most of the vacant space was in the 1,000 to 5,000 square foot range,” he says. “As for large spaces,” he adds, “there weren’t any.”

The lack of big blocks of space in Beverly Hills has sent many entertainment users west to Santa Monica, according to Cushman & Wakefield's DeSantis.

“We saw the opportunity to control the largest space in the market, and it paid dividends for us,” Laderman says.

The spaciousness of the property was another selling point, according to Laderman. “Beverly Hills is a very small area and it’s very land constrained,” he says. The UTA Plaza, however, has a larger plaza, abundant outdoor space and balconies. UTA and Playboy, he adds, “want that entertainment campus kind of feel.”

Tishman marketed the space to entertainment firms and was able to interest a number of potential tenants at a time when office leasing activity in the rest of the LA market was blas