Macerich CEO, Tom O’Hern, joined the USC Price Real Estate Alumni & Affiliates (PREAA) for an intimate dinner conversation on February 19 at Westside Pavilion’s Westside Tavern. O’Hern discussed the future transformation of the mall into 584,000 square feet of creative office space for Google.
The private dinner gave PREAA members an inside look at O’Hern’s vision for the One Westside campus and a look into ways Macerich, the third-largest owner and operator of shopping centers in the US, attempted to repurpose the space into a fashion outlet center, adaptive reuse and creative office. O’Hern noted that the search for the perfect tenant proved elusive.
The new Google campus, projected to open in 2022 will receive an overhaul of $500 million. O’Hern claimed that timing and the location of the property was everything.
“There’s a lack of space here,” O’Hern said. “Santa Monica is about 97 percent occupied, and Playa Vista is about the same. If your prototype is the big floor plan, you have to get a little creative. This is a pretty unique piece of real estate, [with a] train station two blocks away.”
With a shift in the use of traditional malls, O’Hern insists that the future of malls in America is bright.
“Malls are not dying, and there’s pretty much no chance in hell that they will,” O’Hern said. “They’re going to be seriously changed in significant ways. They’re going to be activated.”
While traditional department store brands like Sears, have disappeared from the market, there has been a shift away from apparel. And, O’Hern stressed that finding tenants isn’t a problem. The concern is identifying the right tenants.
“We’ve got a lot of exciting new brands that are getting far more active in taking brick-and-mortar space, and none of these existed five years ago,” O’Hern said. “There’s far more retailers to pick through today than we ever had.”
The private dinner was a membership benefit offered to PREAA members with the cost of their membership. PREAA is an exclusive real estate community comprised of USC Price alumni working within the real estate industry. We provide a forum for professional development of our alumni, opportunities to mentor current students seeking professional exposure to the world of real estate, and to support USC Price priorities for real estate programs.
For more information, please visit https://priceschool.usc.edu/give-to-price/preaa/