The struggling downtown office market has a new entrant.
PNC Bank, a subsidiary of Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., has leased a floor at 515 S. Flower St., the building known as City National Bank Plaza.
The bank, which runs a primary local office in Century City alongside outposts in Calabasas and Pasadena, plans to move into its fourth Los Angeles-area location Dec. 14. To start, most employees working out of the downtown office will come from PNC’s commercial and corporate banking divisions.
The bank’s newly promoted regional president for the greater L.A. market, Daniel Timmons, said he spent most of his banking career in downtown before the COVID-19 pandemic drove vacancy rates up and shuttered businesses dependent on departed office workers. PNC’s local expansion is an exciting, intentional move to bring activity and business back to the area, he said.
Downtown’s revival
“To be part of the solution for downtown, helping revitalize that downtown business core is something that we’re proud of and is really important to us,” Timmons said.
Office vacancy in downtown, which has climbed steadily since 2016 and more sharply in the immediate post-pandemic years, has started to taper down. In this year’s second quarter, it sat at 33.3% for all of downtown and 30.5% for the area’s core business district, data from real estate services firm Avison Young shows.
The financial district’s marquee towers, like the one PNC chose, have been particularly successful in attracting corporate tenants back, signaling a “flight to quality” as opposed to a broader recovery, AY wrote in its latest office market report.
Other major players committing to the downtown scene are Banc of California, which moved into a new 40,000-square-foot office at 865 S. Figueroa St. last month on an 11-year lease. In May, accounting and professional services firm KPMG swapped its previous space at downtown’s KPMG Center for a reimagined, hybrid-friendly office in the U.S. Bank Tower.
The post PNC Eyes New DTLA Outpost appeared first on Los Angeles Business Journal.
