Finding the Right Creative Office Space: Nashville, Atlanta, LA, and Beyond
Creative professionals need more than four walls — good light, real acoustics, and the right location. A guide across three major creative markets, and beyond.
The right space is important for any business, but for creative professionals, it can be make or break. Good design and amenities can genuinely inspire creative work — poor lighting or muddled acoustics can make certain jobs literally impossible. Location complicates things further: for agencies, entertainers, and professional services firms, the city and even the specific neighborhood determines your business prospects directly, even as telecommuting has made location more flexible for many other industries. Here's a guide to finding and building out creative office space in three of the nation's creative capitals — and beyond.
Creative office space comes with unique constraints — sound isolation, landlord flexibility on noise-generating tenants, aesthetic considerations for recruiting and clients — that a standard office search doesn't face. Nashville, Atlanta, and LA each have their own specific version of these challenges, but even smaller markets can offer genuinely creative space when the right building finds the right use.
Nashville
Nashville has always been at the heart of country music — Music City's iconic artists run from Bill Monroe and Patsy Cline to Sturgill Simpson. But Nashville is defined by far more than music alone. A sustained period of rapid job and population growth pushed the city into national headlines, and that growth hasn't fully let up since — good news for the local economy, but genuinely difficult news for the creative businesses and musicians who helped put the city on the map.
According to Cameron Bice, a commercial real estate advisor who has served the Nashville market, the growth is creating a landlord-favored market that specifically disadvantages these tenants:
"The continued growth of Nashville is bringing waves of outside investment, transplant residents, and more businesses into the market. The increasing rental rates and low vacancy rates has created a landlord-favored market which does not favor these types of businesses. Many local owners have sold or are selling off their portfolios. Likewise, many smaller, creative options are being redeveloped — both of those factors make existing spaces harder to find and more expensive to lease."
— Cameron Bice, commercial real estate advisor, Nashville
Minimum lease terms of three years or more are common, and shorter deals outside of a sublease or coworking arrangement are genuinely hard to find, since landlords in a tight market can afford to hold firm. Any buildout adds real time, too — Nashville's architects, contractors, and permitting offices all carry heavy workloads. Bice's advice: assume any buildout will cost more and take longer than expected, and discuss noise-sensitive uses with the landlord as early as possible, before neighboring tenants become frustrated two months into the lease.
Atlanta
Nashville may carry the Music City title, but Atlanta has its own deep musical roots, particularly in hip hop, home to innovative artists across decades. Atlanta's creative reputation extends well beyond music — rapid growth and a rich artistic history have made it a genuine destination for entrepreneurs and creative businesses alike, though that growth brings real challenges for anyone searching for space, according to Todd Seaman, a senior commercial real estate advisor working in the Atlanta market.
"The Atlanta market is very competitive right now for well-located, quality space, and landlords hold the edge due to supply and demand factors. I let potential clients know early on that they need to have business financial information ready to go so when we find the right space we can move quickly."
"Landlords are very hesitant when it comes to music producers and entertainers due to sound concerns and the number of visitors they may have. Creatives also generally have higher parking count requirements, which is why public transit or public parking options are so important."
"Finding quality space that is available in the market is the single biggest challenge in Atlanta. Most well-located, fairly priced options have limited availability."
— Todd Seaman, senior commercial real estate advisor, Atlanta
These challenges sometimes require considering more than the building and lease alone. Seaman describes a specific example:
"I worked with an acting school headquartered in LA that wanted to establish an Atlanta office. The three biggest challenges were parking, sound created during business hours, and limited budget, since this was their first office in town. I found a building with overflow street parking and a landlord that would accept the use, and helped them meet with neighbors prior to signing the lease to ensure potentially loud acting scenes wouldn't interfere with their business."
— Todd Seaman
Balancing aesthetics and function matters too: "Creatives want a bit of the 'cool' factor for recruiting and employee retention," Seaman notes, but open ceilings and polished concrete — while visually appealing — can hurt call quality, so plan for small private call rooms. And it's worth pushing landlords to fund necessary lighting upgrades as base building improvements rather than counting them dollar-for-dollar against your tenant improvement allowance, since those upgrades hold value for the building beyond your own tenancy.
Los Angeles
As a creative center, Los Angeles needs no introduction — home to Hollywood, a capital of the recording industry, and a major player from design to tech startups. But starting or growing a creative business here isn't easy: a genuinely high cost of living and notorious traffic and sprawl make location decisions more consequential than in most cities.
In this competitive market, coworking spaces built specifically for creatives on tighter budgets have become a popular option. The Muse Rooms is one example — a coworking provider built around creative and production-adjacent tenants that has weathered real change over the years. Its original NoHo Arts District location closed during the pandemic, but the company has continued operating and expanding since, now running locations in Burbank, Toluca Lake, and Glendale.1 Current pricing and availability are best confirmed directly with any provider, since both shift over time.
One benefit of building out a creative space in LA is the depth of local design talent. Jessica Rose, founder of Rose Studio Interiors — a San Diego-based commercial and hospitality design firm serving the broader Southern California creative market — champions a genuinely collaborative buildout process. On a project converting a downtown San Diego loft into a photo and video production space:
"The process for creating this space was highly collaborative. The clients knew what they wanted for the most part, and as photographers and videographers they really knew what type of shots their clients were after. The challenge was ensuring there was something for everyone, but that there were also elements unique enough to set this space apart from other studios."
"Another tip would be to hire a professional, even if it's just for consulting — getting things like paint colors and building details right make a huge difference, and so does being able to think outside the box and have some really unique features that make your space stand out."
— Jessica Rose, founder, Rose Studio Interiors
You Don't Need a Major Market to Find Creative Space
The commercial real estate industry keeps evolving — new ways of dividing and sharing space, changing office design trends, and genuinely inventive approaches to finding the right space. Increasingly, creative businesses are building customized solutions outside the traditional big-city playbook entirely.
That's exactly what husband-and-wife team Trish and Marcos Digliodo did in 2015, converting a former Catholic church property in Ambridge, Pennsylvania — near Pittsburgh — into Paramount Co-Op, now a still-operating coworking and business incubator space.2 The building itself is a small history lesson in how real estate adapts — originally built to serve immigrant workers at the American Bridge Company, it later became a community center before falling into disrepair and being converted into its current use.
"We started with the coworking space so we could generate revenue as soon as it was finished. Then we did one office at a time and rented them to generate more revenue. It's a bit like the saying, 'How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.' Had we tried to do the project all at once, it would have been overwhelming."
— Trish Digliodo, co-founder, Paramount Co-Op
Whether you're looking for a traditional office, coworking space, or a co-op like Paramount's, the right creative space is out there. Read our guide to the full commercial leasing process, or use good amenities and design to make whatever space you choose work harder for your team.
Find the Right Creative Space, Wherever You Are
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- The Muse Rooms. The Muse Rooms — Coworking and Private Offices in LA.
- Paramount Co-Op, Ambridge, PA. Paramount Co-Op.
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