Century City luxury condo tower to house chef-driven restaurant

The Century, a luxury condominium tower in Century City, will soon house a restaurant operated by high-profile Los Angeles chef David Myers.

His yet-to-be-named restaurant will be open to the public and also cater private meals and events for residents of the 41-story tower such as Candy Spelling, who owns the top two floors.

The ground-floor restaurant will have a separate driveway and entrance from the residences, said Jeff Blau, president of the Related Cos., the developer of the tower on Avenue of the Stars.

“It will feel like a real restaurant with valet parking,” he said. “The building was designed with this concept in mind.”

Related has put chef-driven restaurants in some of its residential properties in New York, including Time Warner Center, but this will be among the first such developments in Los Angeles.

Myers operates Comme Ca, a French-style brasserie in West Hollywood, and Pizzeria Ortica, an Italian restaurant in Costa Mesa. His restaurant in the Century will be influenced by his travels and the time he spent in Japan over the last year setting up a culinary outpost in Tokyo.

“We’ll be focused on incredible ingredients blended with [influences of] the Silk Road path of Japan and Southeast Asia,” he said.

The Art Deco-inspired Century was completed in 2010 at cost of $300 million. Spelling, the widow of television mogul Aaron Spelling, was one of the first buyers and is still constructing her penthouse.

There have been $45 million worth of sales in the building this year and 30% of the units have now been sold, according to Related.

HP renews lease on El Segundo building

Information technology firm Hewlett-Packard Co. renewed its lease of an entire building in El Segundo, real estate brokers said.

The 47,576-square-foot building at 621 Hawaii St. is the regional office of the Palo Alto technology giant, according to brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle. The landlord is Asset Management Consultants Inc. of Mission Hills.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but experts familiar with the South Bay real estate market valued it at about $6 million.

The one-story building near Rosecrans Avenue and the 405 Freeway was built in 1965 and renovated in 1990, according to real estate data provider CoStar Group.

$50-million industrial project to break ground in Torrance

Xebec Realty Partners Inc. has started work on what brokers said is the largest industrial project to break ground in the South Bay since 2007, a $50-million complex in Torrance.

The development will consist of two buildings totaling 436,000 square feet. One of the buildings, which will be 173,000 square feet, is being sold to an unidentified buyer, said broker John Schumacher of CBRE Group Inc.

The second, larger building, a warehouse, is being built on speculation, Schumacher said.

The development, called the Xebec Commerce Center-Torrance, is scheduled for completion by the end of the year at 500 Crenshaw Blvd. Xebec hopes to achieve a platinum rating for environmental sustainability from the U.S. Green Building Council.

roger.vincent@latimes.com