Skechers Just Emptied a Beachfront Headquarters It Finished Renovating Less Than a Decade Ago

Skechers just put its landmark beachside California headquarters on the market completely empty.

Commercial brokers are calling the listing one of the rarest offerings Southern California has seen in years.

What that empty building reveals about California's office market should worry every business owner still planted in the state.

A Vacant Class A Tower in One of California's Richest Zip Codes

Skechers listed its three-story headquarters at 228 Manhattan Beach Blvd. for sale through CBRE.

The nearly 30,000 square foot Class A building includes a private three-level underground garage with 69 parking stalls and ground-floor retail potential.

Skechers spent heavily renovating the property in 2018, turning it into a purpose-built corporate showcase a block from the sand.

CBRE vice chairman Stephen Somer is running the sale as a competitive bidding process.

Somer told Connect CRE that opportunities to acquire a vacant Class A office building of this scale in downtown Manhattan Beach are "exceptionally rare."

The building will be delivered vacant, meaning Skechers has already cleared out.

Skechers itself is not struggling.

The company agreed to a $9.4 billion buyout from Brazilian private equity giant 3G Capital in 2025, with founders Robert and Michael Greenberg staying on to run it.

A growing, newly private company walking away from a beachfront headquarters it finished renovating less than a decade ago is not the normal picture of corporate health.

It is the picture of a state where even the winners are shrinking their footprint.

California's Office Market Is Bleeding Out Around Skechers

The Skechers building did not go empty in a vacuum.

Kidder Mathews data puts South Bay direct office vacancy at 13.8 percent in the first quarter of 2026, with total vacancy climbing to 15.3 percent once empty sublease space gets counted in.

Los Angeles landlords are holding asking rents essentially flat even with that much space sitting dark, with regional brokers describing owners as unwilling to cut prices no matter how long a floor stays empty.

That combination, flat rents and persistent vacancy at the same time, is the signature of a market where landlords are betting the glut is temporary rather than racing each other to fill it.

Skechers built its name and its fortune in Manhattan Beach.

Now its most polished building sits dark while the rest of the submarket limps along with it.

The Pattern Skechers Just Became Part Of

Digital Brands Group CEO Hil Davis moved his company's headquarters out of California entirely, building out roughly 70,000 square feet in Round Rock, Texas, just outside Austin.

"Doing business in the state of California sucks," Davis told Fox News.

Davis pointed to housing costs, brutal commutes, and operating expenses, including legal bills from fighting lawsuits, as the reasons he pulled his company out.

A Hoover Institution report found California headquarters departures hit three times the 2018 rate by 2021, costing the state eleven Fortune 1,000 companies in three years, with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Oracle, and Tesla leading the list.

The report blamed economics, "plain and simple," pointing to high costs driven by state and local policy.

Skechers has not announced a relocation out of state, and its founders say the company will stay headquartered in Manhattan Beach.

But a company that just built a showcase headquarters and then emptied it anyway is not proof the state solved its cost problem, it is proof companies have learned to hedge their bets against it.

What an Empty Beachside Tower Says About Newsom's California

Companies consolidate and shed real estate when the cost of keeping it no longer makes sense, and that calculation gets harder every year California piles on new mandates, new taxes, and new compliance rules.

Governor Gavin Newsom keeps selling California as the world's fourth largest economy while roughly one in seven of its office buildings sits empty and landlords are too scared to even drop the rent.

Skechers can absorb the hit because 3G Capital just paid $9.4 billion for the company.

Smaller businesses watching their rent climb and their office next door go dark do not have that cushion.

Every empty floor in Manhattan Beach is a receipt for a business climate that keeps asking more from companies that have already given plenty.

Sources:

• Connect CRE Staff, "Skechers Headquarters in Manhattan Beach Listed for Sale," Connect CRE, October 24, 2026.
• Fox News, "The Real Reasons Why In-N-Out and More Are Leaving California," Fox News, 2026.
• RedState Staff, "Doing Business in California Sucks, Yet Another Company Flees Gavin Newsom's Golden State," RedState, August 17, 2026.
• Fox Business, "California's Business Exodus Soared in 2021, Report Finds," Fox Business, 2026.
• Lee Ohanian and Joseph Vranich, "The Exodus of Firms From California: Facts, Reasons, Solutions," Hoover Institution, 2022.
• Kidder Mathews, "Los Angeles Office Market Research Report, First Quarter 2026," Kidder Mathews, 2026.