After years of sluggish leasing and pandemic‑era losses in foot traffic, Hollywood’s retail core is showing signs of a real rebound. More than 150K SF of new commitments have been announced in the past six months, and a wave of restaurants, nightlife and wellness operators are cropping up on Sunset and Hollywood boulevards in the heart of the neighborhood.
While the neighborhood’s momentum can be attributed in part to its central location, cultural cache and unique historic buildings, some of it is also because landlords are being more aggressive about landing the right tenants, whether that’s closing deals quickly or offering attractive concessions.
“There is a true partnership sentiment with the landlords and tenants right now, from a concession standpoint,” CBRE First Vice President Greg Briest said. “As long as both parties are feeling that there’s skin in the game on both sides of it, there’s great chances for deals to be done right now.”
Net absorption in the submarket entered positive territory, clocking 178K SF in Q1, an improvement over negative 91K SF in Q1 2025, according to CBRE. Retail vacancy for the submarket, which CBRE combines with the Wilshire corridor, was 8.3% in the first quarter of 2026, down just slightly year-over-year from 8.4% in the beginning of 2025.
First-quarter net rent was averaging $3.75 in the submarket including Hollywood this year, down from $3.78 at the end of 2025 and down from $3.98 in the first quarter of 2025, according to CBRE. The report did not specify if the rate listed was for asking or effective rents.
In the Hollywood core, rents were $3.15 per SF versus $3.51 in the rest of Hollywood at the end of 2025, according to the Hollywood Partnership.
Wellness company Bathhouse signed a 55K SF, 25-year lease in March for 6400 Sunset Blvd., the former Amoeba Music building. The company will convert the former music store into a massive spa with hot and cold indoor plunges and rooftop pools.
In February, Kilroy Realty Corp. announced that Fitler Club, a members-only club from Philadelphia, would backfill the 93K SF space at 6121 Sunset Blvd. left vacant by NeueHouse in September.
It’s not just upscale wellness driving the upswing. Grocery store Bristol Farms, which caters to a higher-end shopper with products like organic eggs that cost $14 per dozen, but doesn’t aspire to the same luxe reputation as Erewhon, opened in late April at Selma and Argyle avenues.
Restaurants and nightlife spots, like the nationally recognized jazz club Blue Note, which opened late last year at Sunset and Selma, have smaller footprints but bring similar excitement.
“They could have chosen to do this anywhere in Los Angeles,” Briest said, specifically speaking about Bathhouse, whose lease he worked on, and Blue Note. “To choose Hollywood to be their home, that’s a big swing.”
Hollywood has struggled with its retail occupancy for decades, but especially since the pandemic. Foot traffic, a critical element of the neighborhood’s vibrancy and success, also dropped off, as office tenants failed to return to their previous numbers. As in other neighborhoods across the city, perceptions of safety dropped and concerns about increasingly visible homelessness grew.
The evolution of the neighborhood out of that post-pandemic slump will continue to lean on office attendance, Briest said, noting that Netflix’s offices do a lot of the lifting there. But even without pre-pandemic office worker foot traffic, pedestrian trips through the neighborhood are on the upswing.
About 34.5M people came through the Hollywood Entertainment District in 2025, according to foot traffic data from the Hollywood Partnership, a nonprofit funded by area property owners. That was a 4.6% drop compared to the same period in 2024, but pedestrian numbers in the first three months of 2026 exceeded 2025’s totals every month.
Retail’s challenges are the flip side of a coin that have benefited the neighborhood, Hollywood Partnership CEO Kathleen Rawson said. The buildings in the core of Hollywood — along Hollywood Boulevard and down Vine Street and radiating out — are often historic, making them handsome and desirable.
But their historic nature also comes with an extra layer of regulations and often translates into large floor plates that are challenging to break into smaller spaces, which can make them harder to rent out.
Landlords are doing their part to counteract the challenges, getting more aggressive in locking in tenants.
In the case of Columbia Square, NeueHouse left in September 2025, and by December, Kilroy was in talks with Fitler to move in. The deal was finalized in time for it to be included in the REIT’s fourth-quarter earnings call.
“That was a very exciting December, to get that started and closed very quickly,” Kilroy CEO Angela Aman told investors on the February call.
The Bathhouse deal involved concessions for tenant improvements, Bathhouse co-founder Travis Talmadge said. Usually, landlords pay for the full cost to build out a Bathhouse space. In this case, “the landlord gave a very substantial TI contribution,” he said, but did not offer further details. Bathhouse will build multiple pools on its roof and construct interior pools and saunas in the building.
Briest acknowledged that some of the deals moving Hollywood forward are happening because of motivated landlords who are offering good deals to fill space, but he underscored that this is a landlord attitude he’s seeing in challenged retail pockets across the city.
“In challenged environments, landlords who are rolling their sleeves up right now, doing all the things they can to help not only their own property but to help the environment and the community around them, is really where we’re seeing a lot of success right now,” Briest said.
That continues to propel a neighborhood up, he said.
“For a while, it seemed like Hollywood just didn’t have that momentum,” Talmadge said. “And now, it very much seems to be there’s a lot of great restaurants out there, interesting tenants popping up and new developments, so we’re excited to be part of that.”
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