Loyola Marymount University is opening a new Silicon Beach-focused Playa Vista campus
Loyola Marymount University is opening a new campus in Playa Vista, expanding its growing presence on the Westside and in Silicon Beach, school officials announced Thursday.
The Jesuit university, which in recent years has dramatically built its programs and local partnerships in film and tech, will house its new campus in the Brickyard, a new 425,300-square-feet commercial development in the 12100 block of West Waterfront Drive that also will lease office and retail space to other tenants.
School officials plan to open the Playa Vista campus in the fall of 2018 and are in the process of designing classrooms and creative production spaces through a long-term lease agreement with the property owner, Tishman Speyer.
The new campus will host events and house the School of Film and Television’s graduate program, which has partnered with such entertainment companies as Disney and 20th Century Fox. The location allows the film school to continue building partnerships and internship programs that could better position students for careers in creative fields, officials said. LMU, which brands itself as “the University of Silicon Beach,” will also explore other academic possibilities that could benefit from the culture and industries centered in this new location.
Having a campus in Playa Vista “is a game-changer,” said LMU President Timothy Law Snyder. “Silicon Beach is one of the world’s fastest-growing startup ecosystems — an ideal counterpart for LMU as the definitive center for global imagination and its impacts.”
Loyola Marymount enrolls more than 9,100 students at its main Westchester campus and its law school near downtown Los Angeles. The Playa Vista campus marks the school’s first major expansion project since 1999, when its acquisition of University Hall added roughly 1 million square feet of space to its main campus and extended its entrance to Lincoln Boulevard. Originally built by Howard Hughes, the building was purchased from Raytheon.
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