LOS ANGELES-Kilroy Realty's $380 million Columbia Square office development in Hollywood has officially broken ground. The massive 680,000-square-foot mixed-use property sits on the historic CBS Broadcast Facility and will house 350,000-square-feet of office space, 20,000 square feet of retail space and 200 luxury long-term and furnished short-term apartment rentals. The property is Kilroy's third development site in the Hollywood market. With development in the downtown market stealing the spotlight, we sat down with Kilroy Realty EVP David Simon to talk about the developer's keen interest in the Hollywood market, the economic benefits of the project and why Hollywood is the next big place for creative office.

GlobeSt.com: Why is the Hollywood market so attractive to you?

David Simon: Hollywood has been gentrifying for the last 15 years, and has all of the foundation and base ingredients for a recovery and a resurgence of office, mixed-use and retail. It has all of the components to have a vibrant market. It is one of the few areas in L.A. where you can create the kind of creative office environments and sense of place within an environment that has access to public transportation, freeways, studios, executive housing, worker housing, amenities, nightlife and all of the things you want in a vibrant market. That with the need for new quality office space—because the market hasn't seen a new office building in 40 years—led us to believe that this was a desirable and a great investment opportunity.

GlobeSt.com: You are targeting creative tech industries for the building. Do see those industries migrating to the Hollywood market over the Westside and South Bay?

David Simon: It is a couple of things because Los Angeles is made up of many markets and all of them offer something different. Hollywood has many, many production companies already. We own 5255 Sunset, one block away from Columbia Square, and we are seeing more entertainment activity, more media companies and more technology companies touring the space and looking for quality space and collaborative space in that market. We are building Columbia Square with the intention of pulling entertainment companies and production companies to come back to the Hollywood market.

GlobeSt.com: What is the ideology behind pairing multifamily with office space?

David Simon: The whole campus has a historic component. It is the first television studio built on the West Coast in 1938, and that is a component that we are preserving. I think there are a lot of apartments being built in Hollywood, but none at the high-end level of luxury and none that have an extended stay component and that are fully-furnished apartments. One of the things we found in our research is that there is a demand for high-end quality units, fully furnished. If people come to L.A., and they are working on a movie for 1-5 months where they don't necessarily want to live in a hotel. We can provide them with executive housing with all the trappings of a hotel. It is really going to provide a supply of something that we believe is needed in the market to house executives along with housing people who work in the entertainment business. The users that we are talking with to house the office space are international companies that have need for high-end luxury spaces for executives that are coming in and out of town for periods of time. I think the match and the synergy between the luxury rental, the type of entertainment project, creative space and the historic component all work really well together.

GlobeSt.com: What are the economic benefits of the project?

David Simon: For first source jobs, it is about 1,300. Depending on the density, there is anywhere from 3,500 to 4,000 people who are going to be living and working in the complex, so the multiplier effect is significant.

GlobeSt.com: Last thoughts?

David Simon: We have three significant developments in Hollywood: Columbia Square, 5255 Sunset Blvd., a high rise one block from Columbia Square, and the four-acre Academy site, which is going to follow Columbia Square as another mixed-use project, so we are big believers in Hollywood and the underpinnings of the market. 

Kilroy has created a walk-through rendering video of the development that shows off the details of the campus.