![]() Jim Murez, manager of the Venice Farmers Market, said the changing economy has naturally priced out “starving artists” in favor of companies pursuing “new art forms in the digital world.” ![]() “If Venice is about anything, it’s about dynamic change and we’re seeing it,” Hoffmann said. Jack Hoffmann, who lives across from Snapchat’s headquarters, said the company’s presence has kept the street clean and reduced violence. “Snapchat wants to be associated with the Venice lifestyle, but it’s overburdening the community and destroying its diversity,” said Levi Brooks, chief executive of digital strategy firm Use All Five. Some residents think Spiegel’s love for Venice is misguided. In January, the company quietly expanded slightly north, signing a three-year lease at Thornton Lofts for a 25,000-square-foot live-and-work space along the people-watcher’s paradise known as Ocean Front Walk. The company now leases a handful of buildings on nearby Market Street, and the few other businesses that remain fear they could be squeezed out in coming years. Even after outgrowing its beachfront bungalow in 2013, he kept Snapchat in Venice. Spiegel apparently thinks the place is cool too. In 2012, GQ magazine named Abbot Kinney Boulevard “the Coolest Block in America.” Real estate values have risen over the decades but the area has maintained a hip image. In the 1950s and 1960s, beatniks and hippies made it their home. Kinney dug out canals to suit the theme most were filled in a few years later. It was created as a real estate development in 1905 by Abbot Kinney, who called it Venice-in-America. Property owner Eric Swepston declined to comment, citing ongoing negotiations. A spokesman for city councilman Mike Bonin, who represents Venice, did not respond. A spokeswoman for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti declined to comment. One person’s big hog is another person’s economic development engine, however. “It would have been fantastic for the mayor or the city to come up with something truly terrific for the community here instead of just having one big hog that might not be around in five years,” she said. Kim Gordon, who moved her interior design studio to the complex in June, thinks politicians should step in. “My eyes are open, but it’s very expensive.” Alternatives in Venice would cost at least 30% to 50% more than he’s paying now, and he’s not sure he can afford that, he said. “For us, the tenants, it’s not a good situation,” said Jim Higgins, chief executive at the IT consulting firm EWireless 1, another Abbot Kinney tenant. “There’s retail tenants and tech firms from around the world that want a Venice address.” ![]() “It’s basically a landlord market there,” said David Thind, an agent at Coldwell Banker Commercial. The median rent for housing in Venice has surged more than 50% over the last two years to $3,100 a month in the first quarter of this year, matching Santa Monica’s median, which has risen 6%, according to real estate website Trulia. market, lease rates rose 27% and vacancy fell by a fifth. ![]() Office lease prices in Venice have doubled to an average of $5.82 a square foot per month since 2011 while the vacancy rate has dropped by more than half, to 10%, according to data from real estate firm CBRE. Several tenants at the Abbot Kinney complex said they’ve sensed for a while that their days there are numbered. Near its Market Street headquarters, the company has displaced a youth shelter, an art studio and, by next year, probably a tavern. Snapchat’s latest expansion will displace about three dozen tenants, most on month-to-month leases, who could receive an eviction notice from Snapchat as soon as June 1. They gripe about a continuing influx of well-heeled techies who’ve made Venice a more expensive place to live and do business. Some residents say the tech company’s rapid expansion will alter the character of Venice, a longtime enclave for poets, artists, musicians, roller skaters, beach freaks and unclassifiable eccentrics. In addition, the article misspelled Venice resident Jack Hoffmann’s name as Hoffman. Snapchat expansion: In the March 31 Section A, an article about the expansion of tech company Snapchat in Venice Beach said that Google was moving its operation from Venice to Playa Vista. It’s about to nearly double its footprint in Venice with a lease for 40,000 square feet in several buildings at Venice and Abbot Kinney boulevards, according to real estate experts and property records. The company is still in Venice, but with 200 employees it has far outgrown its cozy house on the beach. Two years later, the messaging app is rich, famous and expanding fast. Snapchat first set up in Los Angeles in a funky old bungalow on Venice Beach, a little start-up with only 14 employees. ![]()
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