A Los Angeles office landmark with ties to Google and star architect Frank Gehry has sold, highlighting how top-tier buildings are driving the deals behind the nation's office recovery.
The Luzzatto Co. bought the 78,578‑square‑foot Binoculars Building at 340 Main St. in Venice from Net Lease Office Properties for $39.6 million, according to CoStar data. The property is fully leased to Google through at least 2030.
At the center of the street‑facing façade designed by Gehry is "Giant Binoculars," a 44-foot-tall Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen artwork that doubles as the car and pedestrian entrance, with entry to the parking garage tucked between the sculpture’s two barrels.
The deal, which closed Jan. 8, follows a 25% year-over-year increase in office sales across greater Los Angeles and comes as the U.S. office market is mounting a cautious rebound, though uneven demand and sluggish hiring show the recovery still has its soft spots, according to CoStar research.
"No matter what the market circumstances are, if you have a single-tenant office building that has amazing credit, plus a unique building, you have a gem on your hands that can withstand any market headwinds," said Catherine Yeh, CoStar director of market analytics for Los Angeles.
Last year's record‑low construction levels and a late‑2025 surge in leasing across the nation finally pushed tenant demand back into positive territory. The nation's record-high vacancy rate of 14.1% is also expected to plateau this year and gradually decrease.
Silicon Beach tech tenants
W.P. Carey acquired the building in LA's so-called Silicon Beach area for $18 million in 1994 before spinning it off along with 58 other properties into the Net Lease Office Properties real estate investment trust in 2023.
Silicon Beach spans LA’s westside from Venice through Santa Monica to Playa Vista and Marina del Rey, and the Binoculars Building sits right in the heart of that tech corridor, anchoring Google’s presence among startups, creatives and media firms in the area.
Net absorption in the Marina del Rey/Venice neighborhood hit a six‑year high in 2025 thanks to a few 40,000‑square-foot‑plus move‑ins, but even with vacancies falling more than 200 basis points, the neighborhood's vacancy rate is still a lofty 24.4% — one of greater LA’s highest, according to CoStar data.
That overhang has kept rent growth muted, yet average asking rents hover around $55 per square foot — about $14 per square foot above the metro area's average — with Venice often rivaling Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.
"Silicon Beach's biggest tailwind, and quite frankly headwind, is that it's overly reliant on the tech sector. Once we see these tech firms come back, the area will explode with growth," Yeh said.
National experts say tech tenants are coming back after a period of reorganization that slowed leasing. In the first quarter of 2025, first-U.S. tech office leasing hit 7.9 million square feet, up 21% from a year earlier, representing 16.4% of total office leasing, according to CBRE. The tech industry took an 18% share of all U.S. office leasing in 2024, up from 14.2% in 2023, the firm reports.
Los Angeles-based Luzzatto owns 35 properties, most of them offices, according to CoStar data.
Net Lease Office Properties owns 16 properties totaling 1.8 million square feet, according to CoStar data. It has been offloading properties in the past year, including sales in December of four office buildings in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Texas totaling more than 800,000 square feet.