| One Wilshire | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Interactive map of One Wilshire | |
| General information | |
| Location | 624 S.Grand Ave,Los Angeles,California |
| Named for | Wilshire Boulevard |
| Construction started | 1964 |
| Opened | 1966 |
| Renovated | 1992 / 2001[1] |
| Owner | GI Partners |
| Affiliation | Telecommunications industry |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 30 |
| Floor area | 664,000 sq ft (61,700 m2)[2] |
| Design and construction | |
| Architecture firm | Skidmore, Owings and Merrill |
| Developer | S. Jon Kreedman & Company |
| Main contractor | Del E. Webb Construction Company |
| Known for | Densely populatedmeet-me-room |
One Wilshire is an office building located at the junction ofWilshire Boulevard andSouth Grand Avenue in downtownLos Angeles, California, United States. Located at the eastern end of Wilshire, its address is 624 S. Grand Avenue. Built in 1966,[3] the thirty-story high-rise was designed bySkidmore, Owings and Merrill,[4] and for its first decades in existence, it was used almost exclusively by law firms.[5] In the early 1990s, it began housing largely telecommunications companies, and in 1992, One Wilshire underwent a major renovation, with the improvements largely related to telecommunication network upgrades.[6] Around this time, a largemeet-me room was constructed[2][7] on the fourth floor,[4] and in 2008,Wired claimed that One Wilshire had "the world's most densely populated Meet-Me room," with around 260ISPs with interconnected networks.[8]
In 2001, theCarlyle Group bought the building for $119 million,[1] and Hines Real Estate Investment Trust inHouston, Texas, paid $287 million for One Wilshire in 2007.[3] It was sold in 2013 from Hines Real Estate Investment Trust toGI Partners for $437.5 million, the highest price ever paid for an office building in downtown Los Angeles.[3] As of 2013, it was one of the top three telecommunications centers in the world,[3] and by 2015 One Wilshire was "the most highly connected Internet point in the western U.S.,"[2] withsubmarine communications cables allowing "one-third of Internet traffic from the U.S. to Asia [to pass] through the building."[2]
Ground was broken for One Wilshire in 1964, and the building was completed in 1966[2] at 624South Grand Avenue in downtownLos Angeles, on the far eastern end ofWilshire Boulevard.[3][4] The high-rise was designed bySkidmore, Owings and Merrill[4] and built byDel E. Webb Construction[9] to be a standard office building[2] with thirty floors[2] and 664,000 square feet (61,700 m2) of space.[2] Even though the address of the building is on Grand, the building's name, One Wilshire, was suggested by Morris Pynoos,[10] as vice president of S. Jon Kreedman Co., who saw the building's location as the start of Wilshire from the east and the end of Wilshire from the west. It was selected by developer S. Jon Kreedman, who would later become known for convertingThe Century Towers in 1977.[3] One Wilshire housed law offices at one point in its first few decades.[5] "Traditional corporate tenants" began moving out in the early 1990s,[2] and the building instead became popular with telecommunications companies, partly because theAT&T Switching Center was only two blocks away.[2]
One Wilshire is located nearSBC Communications/Pacbell's centralswitching station at 400S. Grand, with its towering, now nearly obsolete,microwave antenna. With deregulation looming in the 1980s, Pacific Bell banned competitors from the central switching station. Thus, long distance carrierMCI mounted its microwave station on the roof of One Wilshire, at the time one of the tallest buildings with good lines of sight downtown. And so began One Wilshire's importance as a telecom site.
— TheCenter for Land Use Interpretation, 2013[4]
In 1992, One Wilshire underwent a major renovation, largely related to telecommunication network upgrades.[6] Telecommunications companies had "congregated" to One Wilshire by the early 1990s,[2] and by 1998, One Wilshire was a "focal point" for the telecom industry, in part because it had a clear line of sight to the east that helped with microwave transmissions.[7] As the building became a hotspot for telecommunications, the so-calledmeet-me room was constructed[2][7] on the fourth floor,[4] which allows the building's tenants to interconnect.[2] In 2001, theCarlyle Group bought the building for $119 million, spending $30 million on infrastructure improvements.[1] As of 2002, the building had five generators for the event of a blackout. Cooling units were primarily on the third floor, as well as on the roof.[4]
In December 2006, theHengchun earthquakes inTaiwan severed several critical undersea fiber optic cables in the Pacific. One Wilshire was one of the hubs able to re-route some of the internet and voice traffic from Taiwan through their facility.[5]CRG West of the Carlyle Group managed the property as of 2007, with 23 of the building's floors designed to hold communications infrastructure compared to offices.[5] Around 300 companies had hardware in the building by that time, includingGoogle and carriers fromAsia,India, andEurope.[5] Others includedVerizon Communications,Savvis,Level 3,Global Crossing,Qwest Communications,Pac-West Telecomm,[1] the Carlyle Group's CRG West subsidiary,[1] andSprint.[8] Hines Real Estate Investment Trust inHouston, Texas, paid $287 million for One Wilshire in 2007.[3] CRG West remained a tenant after the sale.[1] In 2008,Wired claimed that One Wilshire had "the world's most densely populated Meet-Me room," with around 260ISPs with interconnected networks.[8] At that point, the building had only four of its thirty floors devoted to law offices.[8]
By 2013, One Wilshire was one of the world's top three telecommunicationsdata centers, along with60 Hudson Street inNew York City andTelehouse inLondon.[3] As a primary terminus for fiber-optic cable routes between Asia and North America,[3] One Wilshire was also the most important telecommunications hub in the western United States.[3] Hines Real Estate Investment Trust sold the building toGI Partners in July 2013 for $437.5 million in US currency.[11] At a sale price of $660 per square foot, it was the highest price ever paid for an office building in downtown Los Angeles.[3] According toFortune, as of 2015, the building is "the most highly connected Internet point in the western U.S.,"[2] with undersea cables allowing "one-third of Internet traffic from the U.S. to Asia [to pass] through the building."[2] After the elevators had been removed, two elevator shafts were converted to hold water pipes used in the extensive cooling systems.[12]
| Date | Seller | Buyer | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1960s | Original land owners | S. Jon Kreedman & Company | Unknown |
| 2001 | S. Jon Kreedman & Company | Carlyle Group | US$119 million[1] |
| 2007 | Carlyle Group | Hines Real Estate Investment Trust | US$287 million[3] |
| 2013 | Hines Real Estate | GI Partners | US$437.5 million[11] |
Initially, One Wilshire leased office space to law firms, though in the 1990s most of its tenants became telecommunications companies.Google was a tenant by 2007,[5] andWilcon expanded its presence in 2013[13][14] after it acquiredIX2,[15][16] which at the time was[15] based in One Wilshire and one of the first colocation tenants in the building, dating back to 1998.[13][17] Among One Wilshire's other major tenants that year wereVerizon Communications,Sirius XM Radio, andChina Telecom,[3] with about a third of One Wilshire used as standard office space for firms such as Musick Peeler and Crowell, Weedon & Co.[3] As of 2015, the building had over 300 tenants.[2] Its largest tenant continues to beCoreSite Realty Corporation,[2][5][18] a data center provider which established an office in One Wilshire upon its founding in 2001.[1] As of 2015, Fiber Internet Center is a tenant, and American Internet Services also maintains apoint of presence (OWPOP) at One Wilshire. Others includeAT&T,Amazon Web Services, andNetflix.[2]East West Bank also has a branch at the main entrance, facing Grand Ave.
Media related toOne Wilshire at Wikimedia Commons| By topic | |
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| Government | |
34°02′52″N118°15′20″W / 34.0479°N 118.2556°W /34.0479; -118.2556
