“Barbie” originator Mattel leases 60K sf in El Segundo

by TRD Staff

UPDATED OCT. 30 at 12:00 p.m.:

Toymaker Mattel, which originated the intellectual property behind the movie “Barbie,” will relocate its studio operations to offices in El Segundo.

The local company inked a lease for 60,000 square feet at Continental Development’s Continental Park campus at 831 South Douglas Street, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The building will serve as a new hub for Mattel studio operations. The firm plans to move out of its current studio offices at an undisclosed location by next year. The new offices in Continental Park are roughly the same size as the current location.

“This lease is part of our push to modernize our real estate by replacing long-term prior spaces with new ones that better fit our design capabilities, entertainment needs and other growth for years to come,” David Traughber, senior vice president of commercial finance for Mattel, told the Business Journal in an email.

Brokers Nathan Piehl, Brett Racanelli and Michael Condon of Cushman & Wakefield represented Mattel in the leasing deal.

Mattel owns the intellectual property behind last year’s hit comedy “Barbie,” starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. The firm is working on other films based on Mattel toys, including a Hot Wheels movie to be produced by J.J. Abrams, a Masters of the Universe film and a Monsters High film.

The Continental Park lease represents the company’s second office deal of the year. This summer, Mattel bought the Grand + Nash office campus at 2160 East Grand Avenue, next to its El Segundo headquarters, for $59 million, or $351 per square foot. The toymaker will use the 168,000-square-foot building for a design center.

In January, SteelWave and Barings surrendered the building to a lender after facing $53.1 million in troubled debt tied to the property.

Mattel headquarters are at 333 Continental Boulevard, a 325,000-square-foot building the publicly traded company has owned since 1989, according to public records.

The El Segundo market has fared better than some other office markets in Los Angeles County, according to the Business Journal. The area, long known fas home to many companies in the aerospace industry, is welcoming other tenants to the area.

The building Mattel leased was once home to a company doing work for NASA’s Apollo program before becoming offices for a magazine publisher. Mattel was a tenant at Continental Park four decades ago.

“We now see in addition to aerospace and defense legacy firms … we now see media, tech and entertainment firms regularly making the decision to call El Segundo their home,” Tarnofsky told the newspaper. “With the unfortunate flight out of downtown Los Angeles … the submarkets of El Segundo and of Century City have been the beneficiaries.”

Clarification: Previous story implied the new location for Mattel studios was an expansion or addition.

— Dana Bartholomew

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