CAA's agreement to lease the huge block of office space in the new project provided the pre-leasing that the owners needed to secure financing for the project, principal Gary Weiss of Santa Monica-based Madison Partners tells GlobeSt.com. The lease is the debut deal for the newly formed Madison Partners, which represented CAA.

Trammell Crow says construction will begin April 2 on the new office development, which will be at 2000 Avenue of the Stars. The project, adjacent to the Century Plaza Towers on the site of the former ABC Entertainment Center, has been on the drawing boards for some time and has been a much-anticipated development on the Westside of Los Angeles. The 790,000-sf development will consist of a 12-story, class A office building; destination dining; a retail promenade of cafes; a cultural center; and a park of nearly four acres. It will be designed by Gensler Architects. Both the new development and the 2.3-million-sf Century Plaza Towers are owned by a JPMorgan Fleming Asset Management-advised consortium of investors, including, among others, the General Motors pension trust, which is also advised by General Motors Asset Management.

Trammell Crow did not put a price tag on the new development, but estimates are that it will be a $270-million to $300-million project.

Weiss notes that the transaction is unusual for the Westside of Los Angeles in that it is a pre-lease of an office tower. Nearly all of the office space built on the Westside in the past 20 years has been done on a pure spec basis, Weiss says. He says the lease calls for CAA to move out of its Beverly Hills space when the new project is completed in late 2006. The deal will be an expansion for CAA, which now occupies about 115,000 sf in multiple buildings in Beverly Hills. Brad Cox, a principal with Trammell Crow who represented the building owners in the CAA lease, says the company has had significant pre-lease interest in 2000 Avenue of the Stars and, with the CAA lease, "We are confident that interest will translate into additional tenancy in the near future."