The Motion Picture Academy Enters Into Unique Lease Agreement With LACMA

In a story out today that involves the worlds of film, great architecture and art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will lease its historic May Company building on Wilshire to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for more than $36 million in a 55-year deal. Also included is the adjacent land where the academy plans to build a movie museum scheduled to open in 2017.

The deal is unusual in a number of ways. The proposal has been on the table for awhile and the lease on the building, known as LACMA West, actually went into effect Oct. 18, 2012 and the first $5 million installment was paid last year. Once the full $36 million (due by October 1st) is paid, the Academy will actually have the lease for 108 years since they have the option to renew for an additional 55 years at no further cost. The May Co. store will be the main museum building and will house exhibition galleries and several spaces for screenings and lectures, while the Academy plans to build the David Geffen Theater, a 1,000-seat cinema with a large see-through dome, on the adjoining land.

Immediately recognized by the gleaming golden cylinder on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, the May Co. building, built in 1939, is one of the most distinctive landmarks on the Miracle Mile and is the city's grandest remaining example of Streamline Moderne architecture. The multiple May Company California branches in the region thrived during Los Angeles's mid-century golden era, and May Co. was considered one of the finest department stores in Southern California. By the early 1990's, however, most of the remaining stores were closed, either due to poor performance or their value for new development, and, after the merger of May Company California with J.W. Robinson to form Robinsons-May in 1993,  LACMA acquired the Wilshire building in 1994.