The House of the 700 Cables

At ground level, the circa-1926 Quinby Building, at 7th Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, looks like a misplaced senior citizen. Its small, polished brass-and-marble lobby is as quiet as a time capsule and less animated. Its one functioning elevator employs a human operator.

Despite a 90% occupancy rate--the place is popular with such telecommunication powerhouses as GTE and MCI/Worldcom--there is an eerie absence of tenants or briefcase-laden visitors passing through. The Quinby’s sleepy-yesteryear atmosphere masks its place as one of the city’s few fully wired office buildings, accommodating more cabling and computers than actual people per square foot. Its 108 fiber strands can handle 13.9 million calls simultaneously.

Virtual reality spawns virtual office tenants for wired landlords such as Quinby owner Gene Elmore, a veteran of the dark ages of rotary phones. Elmore saw the niche open in commercial real estate during phone deregulation, when such fledglings as MCI began renting whole floors in the One Wilshire Building because of its proximity to a downtown Pacific Bell/AT&T; switching station. Then fiber optics, with their ability to move greater volumes of information faster, emerged as a communications staple for the global economy.

Now, to satisfy the ever-growing demand for high-tech equipment space, floor after floor of computerized telecom switching gear inhabit space previously occupied by lawyers and accountants. They fetch rents that run 50% to 60% higher than the current average for comparable buildings downtown. Elmore rattles off other buildings in the vicinity with sizable telecommunication equipment tenants: 609 and 650 S. Grand Ave. (both of which he owns), 530 W. 6th St., 770 Wilshire Blvd. and 818 W. 7th St.

All this high-tech allows landlords to operate low-tech--no wastebaskets to empty, no furniture to dust, no carpets to vacuum, and little demand for a lift. Says Elmore: “The elevator operator is going to sleep.”