United Talent Agency leases former Hilton Hotels headquarters

Nov. 15, 2011 6:55 PM PT

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United Talent Agency has agreed to move its headquarters into the former Hilton Hotels headquarters near Beverly Hills City Hall in one of the region’s biggest office leases this year.

The talent agency, one of the world’s largest, signed a long-term agreement to rent 120,000 square feet. New York developer and landlord Tishman Speyer acquired the former Hilton buildings at 9336 and 9346 Civic Center Drive in January and launched a $30-million makeover of the complex built in the 1980s to make it appeal to prosperous tenants.

United Talent will begin its own multimillion-dollar improvements to its space early next year and move 350 employees there by late 2012, the agency said. Plans by architectural and design firm Rottet Studio include a 150-seat screening room and other amenities.

The complex will be renamed UTA Plaza.

Magazine publisher Playboy Enterprises Inc. announced last week that it will also move into 45,000 square feet in the former Hilton headquarters, which is now nearly fully leased, Tishman Speyer said. Terms of the leases were not disclosed, but the landlord is asking for about $4 per square foot per month for space in the complex, according to real estate data provider CoStar Group.

The talent agency now occupies 80,000 square feet in Wilshire Rodeo Plaza at 9560 Wilshire Blvd., the former headquarters of investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert.

“After 20 great years on Wilshire we are excited to have a new campus that will allow for our continued growth and provide an enhanced environment for our colleagues and clients,” the agency’s board of directors said in a joint statement.

The agency also has an office in New York.

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