Wedbush Securities to leave namesake building in DTLA for Pasadena

Wedbush Securities is leaving the desks at its namesake building in Downtown Los Angeles for a smaller office in Pasadena.

The locally based stock brokerage is pulling up stakes from its 100,000-square-foot headquarters in the Wedbush Center at 1000 Wilshire Boulevard, along the Harbor Freeway, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The company is setting up shop at a 20,000-square-foot office on Lake Avenue in Pasadena, an 80 percent shrinkage of its office footprint. The firm now leases an office at the Penthouse, at 225 South Lake Avenue. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Lake Avenue, a commercial artery in Pasadena, teems with a range of restaurants and shops, as well as gyms.

Wedbush is exiting the prominent office tower as a shift to remote work has caused many companies to downsize offices, which has decimated the Downtown office market. CBRE’s third-quarter report found overall vacancy Downtown is more than 30 percent, or “triple the amount considered to be a healthy balance between tenant and landlord interests,” according to the Times.

Thousands of office workers have left, unlikely to return. Many shops and restaurants remain closed. Office tenants say the streets feel less safe than they once did.

Wedbush has been based at the Wilshire Boulevard building since 2001, with two Wedbush signs on the structure visible from the 110 Freeway. Its lease with landlord Lincoln Property, based in Dallas, expires next year.

“It’s a big deal, a very big decision for the firm,” President Gary Wedbush told the Times regarding the move. “The pandemic and COVID created a different kind of office for us.

“There are places like Pasadena that seem to have recovered more fully from the pandemic than Downtown Los Angeles has. That was a part of the decision-making.”

Most employees must now report to the office a third of the time, he said. Shared workspaces can be used as needed by various employees, instead of assigned desks. 

One of the two floors Wedbush Securities leased in Pasadena has a rooftop deck that the company plans to make into an outdoor office space with conference tables and computer workstations.

Wedbush Securities was co-founded in 1955 by Wedbush’s father, Edward, in Los Angeles. The firm now has close to 900 employees in 28 cities across the U.S. The company will formally move its headquarters from Downtown to Pasadena in the first half of next year.

The exit reflects a trend that has affected Downtown and much of Los Angeles County for the last few years, CBRE said in a recent report on office leasing.

“The Greater Los Angeles office market continued its search for the bottom” in the third quarter, CBRE said, as both tenants and landlords “navigate the ongoing supply and demand imbalance exacerbated by the shift to hybrid and remote work.” 

— Dana Bartholomew

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