California Apparel News

The California Market Center is expecting a very big new tenant—one that has nothing to do with the apparel industry—to move in this December.

Audyssey Laboratories—which develops new technology for improving sound then licenses the technology for sound systems used in home theaters, automobiles, televisions and other devices—has almost completed phase one of its large office complex and audio studios, which will be located on the seventh floor of the “C” building.

When the company moves into the fashion-oriented CMC, it will be one of the largest non-apparel tenants in the 3-million-square-foot structure in downtown Los Angeles.

Audyssey’s 26,022 square feet of space will have four or five testing and listening studios for research and several offices for the 40 employees who will be moving from the company’s current headquarters at 350 S. Figueroa St. in downtown Los Angeles.

The company also has offices in Japan and South Korea to be closer to companies such as Sanyo, Subaru and Toshiba that use its technology.

“Right now we are spread out over three different suites in the World Trade Center, which really isn’t great for morale,” said Chris Kyriakakis, the company’s founder and chief technology officer. “We are excited. The move is going to be a pain because we have a lot of sensitive equipment.”

Phase two for the Audyssey Laboratories headquarters will start next year. It includes a two-story acoustics-measurement studio occupying 3,350 square feet that will start on the first floor next to the Bank of America in the CMC's “C” building and rise through a space cut in the ceiling to the second floor. “It’s like a big cage filled with foam. It is an anechoic chamber,” Kyriakakis said. (Anechoic chambers are designed to stop reflections of sound to conduct experiments on how to make better-sounding loudspeakers.) “If you go in there, you can hear your heart beat. It is the quietest room and the spookiest. People get disoriented because you don’t hear any [sound] reflections, and you are used to balancing your body with reflections,” Kyriakakis explained.

When looking for new Southern California headquarters, Audyssey Laboratories did an extensive search for office space in Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles.

The hunt for new quarters was undertaken by real estate agent David Coe, who is a minor investor in Audyssey Laboratories. “At the end of the day, we felt there were few buildings that fit our needs,” Coe said.

The CMC has ample parking; is near the University of Southern California, where Kyriakakis still teaches in the electrical-engineering department; has good public transportation; and is near a number of hip new bars and restaurants that can be enjoyed by the mostly young employees who work at the company.

“We liked it because it was offbeat, nontraditional and was a little more creative,” Coe said. “It was also large enough to give us 30,000 square feet and room for growth.”

Audyssey executives approached the CMC’s management about leasing the space and doing a build-out. Jamison Services, which bought the building in 2005 for $130 million, worked with Audyssey to make the project happen in a section of the complex that has had a high vacancy rate. The audio-technology company signed a 10-year lease.

Welcome to the neighborhood

The thought of a non-fashion tenant leaves some CMC occupants a little dismayed. “I wish [the CMC] luck with that because most of the apparel companies are moving out,” said Michael Gae, the co-owner of the Rep et Trois showroom, which has been in the CMC for 30 years. “So I guess that is the direction they think is more useful.”

Jaime Lee, president of the CMC, said the building is huge and there is room for everyone. “As a whole, we have never been a single-industry building. We have textiles, childrenswear, gifts and creative industries,” she said. “This in no way diminishes what we are doing to the apparel side of the building, and our focus on apparel will always be there.”

Lee said the building’s 2013 budget incorporates additional promotions for attracting buyers to the various fashion market shows.

Other tenants were glad to see the CMC become a more vibrant place. “I am all for it,” said Mike Bowling, who represents Hugging Kisses on the third floor.“All the apparel market centers are dying in Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas. If we can keep the doors open, so much the better. We still have the best lobby for fashion shows and a fashion theater for shows like Select.”

In addition, the CMC is also doing a major build-out for the Ross Dress for Less buying offices on the ninth floor, which will double its space to nearly 50,000 square feet. The office, which now has about 180 employees and occupies nearly 23,000 square feet, will add another 100 workers, including assistant buyers and operations and human-resources personnel, to the nearly 23,000 square feet of new office space the Pleasanton, Calif.–based retailer is constructing.

Wired for sound

Audyssey was established in 2002 as a spinoff from an audio think tank at the University of Southern California’s Integrated Media Systems Center, a National Science Foundation engineering research center. The media systems center was founded by Kyriakakis, who teaches at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering, and Tomlinson Holman of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, along with two former USC students and researchers, Sunil Bharitkar and Philip Hilmes.

Holman is known for co-inventing the THX sound system with filmmaker George Lucas in 1983 to ensure that the soundtrack for the third “Star Wars” film, “Return of the Jedi,” would be accurately produced.

Holman received an Academy Award in 2002 for technical achievement and now works for Apple Inc. as its audio chief.

The first Audyssey technology was released for home-theater receivers in 2004. It addressed the negative effects of room acoustics and the surfaces of walls, windows and furniture on sound reproduction. λ