Union Bank Inks 345,000-SF Office Lease

The bank's new deal adds two floors of space at the 39-story office tower, which occupies a 3.5-acre site at 445 S. Figueroa St. and has been its Los Angeles headquarters since the building was constructed in 1967. Union Bank is the primary subsidiary of San Francisco-based UnionbanCal Corp.

The bank was represented in the lease by Robert Ortiz of Cushman & Wakefield and Craig Poletti of Union Bank, with Hines represented in-house by marketing director Alan Polley and senior vice president Colin Shepherd. The 445 S. Figueroa building is currently 97.4% leased. The deal is the largest Downtown L.A. office lease since the Gas Co. leased 500,000-sf in 1989 at the Gas Co. Tower, a Maguire Properties-owned building at Grand Avenue and Fifth Street.

Hines, which owns and manages approximately 2.2 million sf in Downtown Los Angeles as part of approximately five million sf of holdings in Los Angeles County, bought the 445 S. Figueroa building in 2005 for about $140 million. It placed the skyscraper on the market for a time last year but later withdrew it.

Hines' Downtown L.A. assets include the 891,000-sf, 48-story Citigroup Center at 444 S. Flower St., which it bought recently from New York City-based Broadway Partners. Terms of that sale were not disclosed, but sources pegged the deal at $280 million.