The tax boon for the city is likely to be greater than if the space had been turned into housing. Commercial real estate tends to generate much more in local property taxes than residential uses, said Christopher Calott, an architecture professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

And surrounding communities tend to like offices more than malls because they’re open fewer hours and generate less foot and vehicular traffic.

“Residential communities like offices for their visibility and the peak use during the day,” Mr. Calott said. “Retail or a shopping mall could potentially be far more of a nuisance in a residential situation.”

Mr. Vouvalides said Hudson Pacific had anticipated this with Westside Pavilion, which opened in 1985 and before its decline had been a part of the local fabric. “The number of people coming into a retail center relative to the number of people that work in an office building, it’s actually a less dense use,” he said, “so we thought that would be received favorably.”

Mall owners have a financial incentive, too. Because they tend to stay longer, office tenants can generally be a more reliable moneymaker for landlords than stores and restaurants.

They can complement, too, any retail that remains in a mall. Office workers will shop, eat and otherwise inhabit the mall’s ecosystem, providing an incentive that owners and operators can use to retain and draw other tenants. It’s another branch in the evolution of brick-and-mortar retail — in-house office space as a selling point.