Seven lease deals totaling 96,000 square feet just landed at the Pacific Design Center's Red Building in West Hollywood, filling out the 400,000-square-foot creative office tower with names like Grindr, AllSaints and beauty distributor SuperOrdinary even as the complex's billionaire owner fights off a wave of lender pressure elsewhere in his portfolio.
Cohen Brothers Realty Corporation, which has owned and managed the Pacific Design Center since 1999, signed the batch of deals at the Red Building, according to The Real Deal. SuperOrdinary, a beauty and accessory distributor, took 25,000 square feet in a deal brokered by Marc Bretter, with Marc Horowitz representing Cohen Brothers on the landlord side. Hourglass Cosmetics, the Unilever Prestige makeup brand, signed a six-year lease for 18,500 square feet, while Tracee Ellis Ross' hair care company Pattern Beauty committed to 7,800 square feet for six years.
The leasing spree also included an eight-year, 14,500-square-foot lease for fashion house Lily et Cie and a four-year, 14,500-square-foot renewal from British fashion company AllSaints. LGBTQ dating app Grindr renewed its headquarters lease at 14,500 square feet, and Australian fashion retailer Princess Polly signed a six-and-a-half-year lease for 11,500 square feet after previously occupying its Red Building space under a sublease arrangement, per the same report and corroborated separately by WeHo Times.
Rents Climb Back to Pre-Pandemic Peaks
The fresh leasing volume builds on a strong 2025 for the Red Building, where asking rents returned to peak pre-pandemic levels of $6.25 per square foot in late 2025, recovering from pandemic-era lows of $5.50 to $5.75 per square foot, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal. The building signed roughly 140,000 square feet in total leases throughout 2025, pushing occupancy close to 90 percent even before this latest round of deals.
West Hollywood's broader office market has held up better than its neighbors. Average asking rents across the city hit $4.83 per square foot in late 2025, compared with $4.62 in late 2019, outperforming submarkets like Hollywood, Miracle Mile, and Downtown Los Angeles, the business journal reports. That resilience stands in contrast to the wider Los Angeles office market, where direct vacancy climbed to 16.4 percent in the second quarter, up from 16 percent in the first quarter and 15.8 percent a year earlier, per The Real Deal. The largest single lease signed regionally last quarter was a 78,064-square-foot deal at Blackstone's Media Studios Phase IV property in Burbank.
A 1.6-Million-Square-Foot Campus With Deep Roots
The Pacific Design Center spans a 1.6-million-square-foot campus anchored by three colored glass buildings designed over four decades by architect Cesar Pelli, who died in July 2019. The 750,000-square-foot Blue Building, nicknamed the Blue Whale, was finished in 1975, followed by the 450,000-square-foot Green Building in 1988 and the Red Building, completed in 2013, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Red Building itself consists of two curved, sloping towers — a six-story West Tower angled toward the Hollywood Hills and an eight-story East Tower — separated by a palm-lined courtyard above seven levels of parking, per Cohen Brothers Realty Corporation.
Beyond office space, the campus houses an outpost of the Museum of Contemporary Art, two restaurants run by chef Wolfgang Puck, and the 200-seat Blue Conference Center, according to the City of West Hollywood. The campus has also served the surrounding neighborhood in smaller ways, with its garage used for overflow parking during a recent kids book festival at West Hollywood Park.
Landlord Faces Major Debt Pressure
The building-level momentum comes as Cohen Brothers' parent company navigates serious financial strain. The company has faced lender disputes over properties in its portfolio.
Cohen's troubles extend well beyond West Hollywood. Lenders Forethought Life Insurance Co. and Kookmin Bank filed for foreclosure in late 2024 over an $85 million loan default tied to a Midtown Manhattan office building, as Hoodline previously reported, part of a pattern of loan default battles playing out across his national real estate portfolio. That backdrop makes the Red Building's steady stream of fashion, beauty, and tech tenants notable — the leasing income at street level stands in sharp relief against the corporate debt pressure hanging over the campus's ownership.
The neighborhood around the Pacific Design Center has also seen active investment lately, with the nearby Kimpton La Peer hotel selling for $63 million to Japan's APA Group in August. For now, Cohen Brothers Realty Corporation continues signing tenants at its flagship West Hollywood asset, even as the outcome of its lender disputes remains unresolved.
