Coopers & Lybrand praises the rooftops: accounting firm breaks tradition to signpost buildings.

Coopers & Lybrand praises the rooftops

National professional firms have traditionally avoided self-promotion like the plague.

Conventional wisdom among such buttoned-down firms, especially among accounting and law firms, has been that tooting one's own horn is somewhat undignified. Better to let your work do the talking and depend on word-of-mouth to attract new client accounts: so the party line goes.

Coopers & Lybrand, however, has never followed that party line in Los Angeles.

The nation's fifth-largest accounting firm has been prominently displaying not one, not two, but three large corporate signs on the exterior of its downtown L.A. regional headquarters building for years.

Its south-facing sign has three-foot-tall letters clearly visible to the hundreds of thousands of motorists traveling the Harbor (110) Freeway each day. The 18-inch-tall letters on its east-facing sign can be seen by thousands more workers in downtown highrises.

Now Coopers & Lybrand is getting ready to vacate its long-time L.A. digs, but the firm is not about to say goodbye to its high-profile signs.

Negotiations are underway for Coopers & Lybrand to relocate its L.A. headquarters to a new downtown skyscraper - the 52-story California Plaza II on Bunker Hill.

And exterior building signs have become a major negotiating point in the talks between Coopers & Lybrand and Metropolitan Structures, landlord of Cal Plaza.

Making building signage a major negotiating point in lease talks with a professional firm is virtually unheard of, industry sources said.

"No law firm or accounting firm ever wants high-profile signage, it's considered cheesy," declared one prominent local real estate attorney. "Professional firms are of the attitude, |Our clients come first, and we're just the minions.'"

Another major reason professional firms prefer to keep a low profile is because of their concern that any ostentation might be offensive to clients, he added.

"These firms don't want their clients coming over to some fancy building named after the firm and saying, |Geez, so this is what I'm paying for,'" he explained. "Firms that do business with a lot of important Japanese clients are particularly aware of this, and tend to maintain very austere offices."

One major accounting firm that has taken the traditional low-key approach to self-promotion is Arthur Andersen & Co.

That firm recently leased nearly 200,000 square feet of the 1.35 million-square-foot First Interstate World Center in downtown Los Angeles. That amounts to about 14 percent of the building's total space.

Almost that same exact percentage of total building space is now being looked at by Coopers & Lybrand at Cal Plaza II.

But while Coopers & Lybrand wants "dominant" signage, Arthur Andersen's exterior signage at First Interstate World Center is limited to one six-inch-high nameplate posted outside the lobby entrance. And that nameplate is buried beneath several other nameplates of tenants in the building.

"We want to be highly visible, but in an understated way," explained Kim Floyd, Arthur Andersen's director of administration. "The signage we have sets the image we want. We prefer to demonstrate our competence in the product we provide. Our clients and potential clients identify us by the work we deliver, not by the fact that they see our sign every day and that reminds them that we exist."

Arthur Andersen actually leases more space in First Interstate World Center than First Interstate Bancorp does - some 40,000 square feet more.

But the building is named after First Interstate. That bank's corporate logo adorns the building's crown, and the bank's street-level nameplate is twice as big as those of any of the building's other major tenants, including that of Arthur Andersen.

But banks are known for their high profiles on downtown skylines. Bank of America, Sanwa Bank, Security Pacific National Bank, Wells Fargo Bank and many other banks have downtown L.A. towers named after them.

Coopers & Lybrand will most likely not get its logo on top of Cal Plaza II. But its sign will apparently be larger and more prominent, by far, than any other major professional firm in town.

The letter of intent now being discussed by Coopers & Lybrand and Met Structures specifies that Coopers & Lybrand will get the "dominant" exterior signage at Cal Plaza II, sources revealed. In other words, Cal Plaza II would most likely end up being referred to as the "Coopers & Lybrand Building."

Cal Plaza II's look-alike predecessor, Cal Plaza I, has no exterior signs or logos attached to its crown.

Cal Plaza II may very well forego topfloor ornamentation as well, which would make Coopers & Lybrand's sign at street level the building's namesake.

Met Structures recently displayed a mock-up "monument sign" on a wall just outside Cal Plaza II's main lobby entrance. That mock-up spelled out Coopers & Lybrand's full name in two-foot-high letters, sources said.

Coopers & Lybrand has not yet signed a lease at Cal Plaza II, and all of the issues regarding the firm's new building signs are still up for grabs. Neither side is talking to the press.

One source close to the negotiations, however, said Met Structures is reserving its right to place another firm's corporate logo on top of its Cal Plaza II tower if a another, larger tenant comes along.

But another source said Met Structures' decision to give up rights to "dominant" street-level signage so early in Cal Plaza II's marketing effort could indicate Met Structures is desperate to lease space.

Met Structures has indeed had a tough time marketing Cal Plaza II. After months of intense effort, it has only preleased 100,000 square feet of the tower's 1.3 million square feet. Even if Coopers & Lybrand takes 175,000 square feet, as is expected, that would still leave more than one million square feet unleased at Cal Plaza II.

"Giving away dominant signage with a million square feet left to lease is insane," declared one downtown leasing expert. "Giving that away so early in the game could create a lot of marketing problems for Met Structures."