A landmark office tower near Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles will soon say USC on top instead of AT&T.

The university signed a large lease that will make it the major tenant in a 1960s office complex designed by William Pereira, one of the region’s best-known mid-century architects.

USC agreed to rent an additional 30,000 square feet in the AT&T Center complex, bringing its presence to 245,000 square feet in buildings at 1150 Olive St. and 1149 S. Hill St., said Phil Belling, managing partner of landlord LBA Realty.

The new space is for the USC Marshall School of Business and the USC School of Social Work. Other USC entities at the site include radio station Classical KUSC-FM (91.5) and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.


Under the lease agreement, USC will take over signage from AT&T on top of the 32-story signature tower at 1150 Olive St. The new sign is scheduled to be installed during the third quarter, and the tower will be renamed the USC Building at AT&T Center.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the landlords are asking for $34 per square foot per year, according to real estate data provider CoStar Group Inc. The building is owned by a joint venture of LBA Realty and LaSalle Investment Management.

“With our continued growth over the last five years in the complex, we expect this location to serve as a strategic long-term solution for the university for years to come,” said Laurie Stone, associate senior vice president for real estate and asset management at USC. “The neighborhood provides a wide variety of new restaurants, housing and service amenities for USC employees.”

The university needed additional offices and some classrooms to supplement its existing space on campus, real estate broker Gary Horwitz of JLL said. And many USC students live in the area known as South Park.


“It all meshed into a great opportunity to do an off-campus expansion,” he said.

Tenants in the 1-million-square-foot, two-building downtown complex include AT&T, Transamerica, Fox Sports, United Way of Southern California and Steelcase.

Among architect Pereira’s other designs were CBS Television City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Los Angeles International Airport.

roger.vincent@latimes.com


Twitter: @rogervincent