Transit-oriented development is expanding into new asset classes. Office projects are going the transit-oriented development route with The Luzzatto Co.'s EXPO Station. The project is an 80,000-square-foot, three-story creative office development along the EXPO line in West Los Angeles. In addition to located near a transit station, the property will also include a parking structure. Transit-oriented development has focused on mixed-use and multifamily projects.

“TOD should absolutely include office, and does as our project illustrates,” Marc Luzzatto, chairman of The Luzzatto Co.. Much of the traffic we see in Los Angeles is the result of people going to and from work. As our traffic worsens today's generation of workers is choosing to work where traffic is less of an issue. People would much rather bike, walk or ride transit to work. Walking and cycling provide physical health benefits while mass transit provides the psychic benefits of time to read, write, or think without the aggravation of navigating traffic. There has been a lot of talk about self driving cars, but the goal is to stop relying on automobiles, whether we are behind the wheel or not.”

Positioning creative office on a transit-oriented sites makes sense. After all, the office niche attracts millennial professionals, which, as Luzzatto says, “tends to be more socially conscious and concerned about the carbon footprint.” The Luzzatto Co. is creating a concrete, wood and glass façade with 16- to 25-foot ceiling heights, operable windows, polished concrete floors, and exposed wood trusses. “Expo Station will provide a most extraordinary indoor-outdoor work experience that will stimulate the creative juices of its occupants,” says Luzzatto. “We are incredibly lucky to have found a site that allows us to take advantage of one of Los Angeles' most beautiful features—the Pacific Ocean. Our site is over 400 feet long, running basically parallel to the oceanfront such that we have an enormous ocean view deck running the entire western exposure of the building. We believe that working in the Expo Station environment will not only provide great physical and psychic benefits to business owners and their employees but will also help with employee retention—an issue that is growing in importance as the labor market tightens.”

While the firm's vision for the project includes much of the characteristics that have become synonymous with creative office, Luzzatto is making changes to create a transit-oriented site. “Creative office space has traditionally been created in one or two story buildings,” he says. “By its nature, TOD should be dense. So the evolution of creative office has to include new ways of thinking about what creative space looks and feels like because it will have to be in multi-story buildings. We are already beginning to see that with some of the buildings in downtown Los Angeles.”