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L.A. County to buy downtown skyscraper for new HQ despite a “hell no” from Hahn
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday approved the county’s purchase of the Gas Company Tower, one of downtown L.A.’s most prominent skyscrapers, paving the way for the transfer of thousands of workers and public services out of the city’s civic center.
With a 4-1 vote, the supervisors gave county officials the final green light to move ahead with buying the tower for $200 million.
The approval came over vehement objections from Supervisor Janice Hahn, who warned that the purchase would sound the death knell for downtown’s civic heart and shunt the county’s workforce to a “souless” office tower on Bunker Hill.
“None of you here are going to convince me that this is a good idea,” said Hahn, before casting her vote against the purchase with an emphatic “hell no.”
County employees are currently based inside the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, a 1960 building named after Hahn’s father, a longtime county supervisor.
The building is one of several county-owned properties considered vulnerable to collapse in a major earthquake. Officials have estimated that it will cost hundreds of millions to upgrade the buildings, making a new, presumably safer skyscraper an appealing alternative to some on the board.
“If we know this building is not seismically safe, then we have an obligation and a responsibility to take action,” Supervisor Holly Mitchell said from the room inside Hahn Hall where the board holds its weekly meetings.
County Chief Executive Fesia Davenport, whose office spearheaded the sale, promised the purchase “will save the county hundreds of millions of dollars” compared with the cost of upgrading the Hall of Administration and other county buildings.
No supervisors have toured the building themselves, according to a county spokesperson, though several of their staff have visited.
The 52-story tower at 555 W. 5th St. was widely considered one of the city’s most prestigious office buildings when it was completed in 1991. It has nearly 1.5 million square feet of space on a 1.4-acre site at the base of Bunker Hill.
The price is a deep discount from the building’s appraised value of $632 million in 2020, underscoring how much downtown office values have fallen in recent years.
At $200 million, the county would get the Gas Company Tower for about $137 a square foot, still a bargain by historical standards. The county also agreed to pay as much as an additional $5 million in closing costs on the transaction.
“This opportunity will not last forever,” Davenport warned, adding that the county could finance the purchase, in part, from money set aside for capital projects.
Hahn said the transaction was akin to “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
“The money being used to pay for this purchase is being stolen from the funds that were meant to keep this building alive,” she said from Hahn Hall.
Richard Keating, the architect who designed the Gas Company Tower to appeal to corporate America, said it makes sense for a public entity to take ownership now.
“We’re looking at a decline in need for standard office use, meaning lawyers, architects and accountants are doing things differently” since the pandemic, Keating said. “City and county employees are still hard at work in their office spaces but they’re tired, old, sometimes decrepit and oftentimes no longer up to code in terms of earthquake” safety requirements.
“It’s a perfect time to take advantage of some of these more or less empty office buildings.”
Moving hundreds of county workers into the Gas Company Tower also stands to lift shops, restaurants and other businesses in the nearby blocks by Pershing Square, he said. “I think it’s a good move all the way around.”
In recent years, the downtown office market has turned against landlords as many tenants reduced their office footprint in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it became more common for employees to work remotely.
Last year, the owner of the Gas Company Tower, an affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management, defaulted on its debt and the property was put in receivership, in which a court-appointed representative took custody of the building to help creditors recover funds they lent to Brookfield. The building has about $465 million in outstanding loans.
Other major tenants in the Gas Company Tower include law firm Latham & Watkins and accounting firm Deloitte. The county will assume the existing tenant leases as landlord.
When the Gas Company Tower is formally owned by the county it will be removed from the tax rolls. The building’s property tax bill last year was more than $7.1 million, according to real estate data provider CoStar.
Tenants would, however, be required to contribute to the tax rolls by an unspecified amount through a “possessory interest tax” that can be levied on private companies leasing public buildings. Tenants in privately owned office buildings also commonly pay a share of the landlord’s property taxes.
The building is in good condition with “a remaining useful life” of no less than 35 years, according to a recent property condition report prepared for the current owner that was obtained by The Times.
The report also said the tower and the World Trade Center garage at 333 S. Flower St. included in the deal require about $1.3 million to address urgently needed repairs and deferred maintenance. Additional long-term costs to maintain and modernize the properties were estimated at about $48.7 million over 12 years. Projected costs include roof repairs, refurbishing air conditioning systems and updating the elevators.
The county currently occupies about 16.5 million square feet of office space for 38 departments, which comprises 6.9 million square feet of leased office space and 9.6 million square feet of owned office space, Davenport said in a memo to the board recommending the purchase of the Gas Company Tower.
The county spends about $195 million per year on the leased office space and the property it owns “is in poor condition and old,” Davenport said. Nearly half of it is more than 50 years old.
By moving staff from both leased office space and aging buildings in poor condition, the county avoids paying rent and the “significant” costs of seismic retrofits and other needed renovations to old buildings such as aging air conditioning, plumbing and electrical systems, the chief executive’s memo said. Funds earmarked for seismic retrofits and other renovations of old buildings will be included in the payment for the Gas Company Tower.
The county inspected the building and will buy it “as-is,” Davenport said. The Department of Public Works reviewed a seismic report for the tower and agreed with it findings. A county spokesperson said the findings will remain confidential until the deal closes.
If the county elects to complete a seismic retrofit and other improvements to the Gas Company Tower, the county can realize a future return on its investment by selling the building when the market recovers, Davenport said.
Southern California Gas Co. said in September that it is planning to move from its longtime headquarters in its namesake tower, where it has been a primary tenant since the building was completed, to another skyscraper a block north at 350 S. Grand Ave.
The utility signed a long-term lease for nearly 200,000 square feet on eight floors in the Grand Avenue building on Bunker Hill often known as Two California Plaza, its new landlord said, and is expected to move by spring 2026 after building out the new offices. The Gas Company will also have an office on the ground floor to serve customers.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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