Downtown Los Angeles, CA

Ripe for Revitalization

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In the late 1990s, downtown Los Angeles suffered from a shortage of housing, retail destinations, parking and signage to meet the needs of residents and workers who commuted to the city.

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Motivated by a combination of economic, political and cultural forces, the City of Los Angeles was determined to transform the city center from a business district into a thriving, 24/7 community with life bustling at every corner.

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Signs of Progress

The City’s emphasis on this initiative led to private and public investment in several major new entertainment and cultural venues in the area. In addition, the City passed an adaptive reuse ordinance in 1999, which encouraged the conversion of older commercial buildings for residential use and contributed to a surge in the residential population.

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Based on these efforts and our own community qualification process, CIM determined that downtown Los Angeles’ South Park District was positioned for significant growth.

CIM’s Impact

In 2001, CIM became one of the first institutional investors in downtown Los Angeles. We committed more than $600 million to the submarket and activated our in-house Investments, Development, Construction and other teams to execute 14 different projects between 2001 and 2007. These included one of the area’s first adaptive reuse projects, as well as the first full-service grocery store in downtown in over 50 years.

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CIM has continued to support growth in downtown Los Angeles. More recent investments include City National 2CAL, a 52-story, Class A office tower with 1.4 million rentable square feet and a range of sustainable features. In 2023, building was recertified as LEED Platinum for another five years. It has also achieved the UL Verified Healthy Building Verification Mark for Indoor Air and Water and earned Fitwel®, ENERGY STAR, and Wired Score certifications.

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In both 2023 and 2024, our Leasing team secured the year’s largest office lease in downtown Los Angeles, with 119,217 square feet leased to Sheppard Mullin in 2023 and 198,553 square feet leased to Southern California Gas Company in 2024.