Warner Center Plaza Iii

Warner Center Plaza III, a 25-story office building, has its first tenant after nearly three years of standing empty. Last month, PaineWebber stock brokerage moved into the ground floor of the 585,000-square-foot tower at Oxnard Street and Owensmouth Avenue in Woodland Hills. PaineWebber is occupying 11,550 square feet of the first floor. "It's nice to have the building open, to show brokerage and tenant companies there are opportunities . . .

Warner Center Plaza III, a 25-story office building, has its first tenant after nearly three years of standing empty. Last month, PaineWebber stock brokerage moved into the ground floor of the 585,000-square-foot tower at Oxnard Street and Owensmouth Avenue in Woodland Hills. PaineWebber is occupying 11,550 square feet of the first floor. "It's nice to have the building open, to show brokerage and tenant companies there are opportunities . . .

Foundation Health Systems Inc. in Woodland Hills has signed a six-year lease for more than 101,000 square feet at Warner Center Plaza III, pushing occupancy past 90% in the 585,000-square-foot skyscraper, which sat vacant for much of the 1990s as a result of the Southern California real estate slump.

The San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys continue to have the lowest office vacancy rate of any major market area in Southern California, according to a report by the real estate brokerage firm Grubb & Ellis. For all of 1995, the office vacancy rate in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys was 13.3%, the report says. That compares with an 18.5% vacancy rate for Los Angeles County and a 17.8% rate for all of Southern California.

Fast-growing Warner Center in Woodland Hills will soon surpass Encino as the West San Fernando Valley's biggest market for office space, according to a report by a local commercial brokerage firm. The study by the Sherman Oaks office of Beitler Commercial Realty Services also found that the office vacancy rate in the area bounded by Encino on the east, Calabasas on the west, Chatsworth on the north and Ventura Boulevard on the south is 11%.

It's clearly not leading the pack, but the long-languishing San Fernando Valley office market is finally picking up the pace after standing by while such markets as Burbank, Glendale and West Los Angeles enjoyed a commercial real estate recovery.

Running a business in the San Fernando Valley became too much of a hassle and expense for Tom Evans, president of Windtree Financial. After eight years at Ventura and Sepulveda boulevards in Sherman Oaks, Evans and his mortgage banking company left the Valley two months ago for cheaper rent and more open space outside Los Angeles County. The Westlake Village Executive Office Park offered Windtree free parking and freedom from Los Angeles' 10% parking tax. That saves Windtree $1,400 a month.

Lennar Partners is set to break ground in December on a 1.2-million-square-foot office complex at Warner Center, the first major speculative project to be built in Woodland Hills since the last recession. The development at the northeast corner of Canoga Avenue and Burbank Boulevard will be called LNR Warner Center and will include eight five-story office buildings, a hotel, a fitness center, several restaurants and a day-care center.

A development company that plans to build one of the San Fernando Valley's tallest office buildings in North Hollywood won a major approval this week that puts its project one important step closer to a construction date. Officials with the city's Community Redevelopment Agency hailed the project as evidence that CRA's efforts to revitalize North Hollywood are starting to bear fruit.

Douglas Emmett Realty Advisors has agreed to buy the Warner Center commercial district's signature glass-skinned office towers from their institutional owners for nearly $340 million, real estate sources said, making the Santa Monica-based investment manager the largest owner of premium office space in the San Fernando Valley. The five-tower complex along Oxnard Street in Woodland Hills was developed between the mid-1970s and early 1990s by Warner Center pioneer Robert Voit and his partners.

Building the first new skyscraper in post-recession L.A. County took a little bit of nerve. Leasing it out is proving to be a lot of hard work. The new 24-story Glendale Plaza at 655 N. Central Ave. was built as a "speculative" project, without most leasing commitments in advance. The developers have rented almost 160,000 square feet of space since the building opened March 18. That leaves them another 370,000 square feet--roughly 17 stories--to fill.