Spring Arcade Building Retail for Lease

The Spring Arcade Building is one of the historic gems of Downtown LA. This building takes up the space between the two streets, Broadway and Spring Street. This building has apartments upstairs, retail on the ground floor, and along the inside there is an open-air mall with huge walkway running from Broadway to Spring Street. Historically this building, Broadway, and Spring street have been home to bargain retailers and whole-sellers offering cheap deals on every day products. Back in the day, Broadway was like the 99 Cent Store of Los Angeles. Well, that is no more.

Due, most likely, to the residential explosion in Downtown LA in the last ten years this area has become home to one of the most popular, if not the most popular, place(s) for young professionals in Downtown Los Angeles. There are three SB lofts buildings on the intersection of which the Spring Arcade Building lies, 6th Street and Spring Street. Not only that but just last year a Starbucks opened up and replaced an electronics bargain retailer in the ground floor corner space of Hotel Hayward, also on Spring Street and 6th Street.

Before that other retailers have been popping up like crazy in this area. The cafe and bar scene are quite possibly the most noticeable momentous real estate entities. Spring for Coffee is across the intersection from Starbucks. Coffee Bar, a high end coffee boutique, recently shut down not long after Starbucks arrived across the street; and is now in the works to be changing over to a restaurant and bar. Right next store to what was once Coffee Bar is Spring Street Bar and The Falls Bar, two local-laden watering holes in this epicenter of gentrification.

Not only retail but creative office buildings in the area like Spring Arts Tower, located on 6th and Spring Street, have recently achieved 100% occupancy. Additionally, a new creative office building called the Corporation Building (formally known as Spring Tower?) recently completed renovation on a couple floors and is in the process of filling up as you read this article.

With the surge of residential and retail in the area it’s curious to point out the high number of vacancies in the open-air space of the Spring Arcade Building. Though, the four corner anchor tenants, two on Broadway and two on Spring Street are leading the way by becoming home to a Famima (they moved in a while ago) and new to arrive will be a Mexican Restaurant and a new cafe (both on Spring Street). A Crepe Store will soon open inside the open-air walkway mall but again, there is A LOT of other vacant retail spaces currently available. On top of that all the units will have new HVAC units and the common central walk-way was re-floored last year with very large beautiful tile.

These spaces are either approx 500SF or 850SF and they go for $2.50 per gross square foot. So respectively that makes them $1250 monthly or $2125 monthly. Minimal five year leases. Also, some of these units are contiguous so if you’re looking for a bigger space you can rent two or three side-by-side each other. You should cash in on this now while you still can because this space will not get any cheaper and the area is continuing to improve!

From my humble opinion, one of the reasons that there is a large vacancy for the retailer is that locals aren’t really educated to walk through open-air walkway leading from Broadway to Spring and Spring to Broadway. Ridiculous amounts of people walk by the entrances, but few people walk through from one side to the other. Of course, with more retailers they’ll have a better reason to do so, but for lack of a better metaphor, you need to first lead a horse to water if you want to get the chance to try to get it to drink.

Also, the building hosts two, to what I estimate to be, a 60 foot by 20 foot banner advertising the apartments upstairs (on both Spring Street and Broadway) but the signs say nothing about the ground floor retail available downstairs. Last I heard the loft apartments upstairs are 100% occupied. Seems like some replacing the “lofts available” signage with “retail available” signage would definitely do this building good… if only Mr. Helen, the owner, would let it be DTLA Real Estate’s Leasing Sign 😉

Whatever the case, the higher number of vacancies is a huge reason for you to capitalize on the current rent rates and open the store you’ve always dreamed about. I am here to help you fulfill that dream. For leasing information for retail space available at the Spring Arcade Building in the glorious city of Downtown Los Angeles, call me, Donegan McCuaig for a tour at (213) 304-4727. May the real estate gods be with you.