As LA?s tech scene matures, old industries such as entertainment and aerospace are new again Amazon?s much-hyped expansion?the company will place 25,000 new jobs each in New York City and Arlington, Virginia?highlights how insular the tech industry can be when it comes to real estate. Tech companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, and New York City have taken up more than 25 million square feet of new office space outside of their primary markets over the past five years, according to a recent CBRE report. A good chunk of that is within those same four markets.
In conversations about tech capitals, Los Angeles rarely comes up, a distant second in its home state to the dominant Bay Area, which vacuumed up $26.5 billion in venture capital funding last year. But LA?s position in the tech ecosystem may be shifting. While nobody believes that dynamic will change, LA has begun to come into its own. Homegrown successes, and the recent opening of large satellite offices by big players including Google, shows how tech is evolving here. The Bay Area isn?t suddenly moving to Silicon Beach. But it is benefiting from the changing nature of what we consider tech.
?We?re going through a renaissance at the moment because of the growth of entertainment and content,? says CBRE vice chairman Jeff Pion. ?There?s a merging of tech and entertainment, and content is king at the moment. The potential from harnessing the existing entertainment workforce in LA immediatel...