Transforming a Legacy Toy Company’s Global HQ into a Hybrid-Ready Ecosystem for the Future of Play and Work
Consumer Goods
Sector
El Segundo, CA
Location
Central Challenge:
A legacy global toy company faced accelerating growth, evolving hybrid work patterns, and increasing pressure on its real estate portfolio. Leadership needed clarity: how to support more than 2,000 employees while reducing inefficiencies, mitigating long-term risk, and aligning capital investment with future workforce behavior.
Ark was engaged to create a long-range decision framework — not just a redesign, but a portfolio strategy built for resilience.
Our Approach:
Through interviews, stacking studies, and spatial analysis, Ark developed a growth-focused restacking strategy aligned with hybrid work.
Modeling the Future
Ark conducted a comprehensive diagnostic, analyzing occupancy data, growth projections, adjacency requirements, and lease exposure. Multiple scenarios were developed and stress-tested against hybrid attendance assumptions, financial implications, and operational complexity.
Rather than advancing a single solution, we developed and stress-tested multiple long-range scenarios. Each was evaluated against defined decision criteria:
Capital efficiency
Flexibility under hybrid variability
Growth capacity
Operational complexity
Risk exposure
This approach transformed uncertainty into structured decision intelligence, enabling leadership to compare tradeoffs with precision.
Tactics:
Over a four-month strategy and design process, Ark worked closely with stakeholders to align the tower with evolving business drivers. Department interviews and headcount projections informed detailed stacking scenario studies, validating relocation strategies and testing preferred adjacencies.
Portfolio Complexity
The Tower's revitalization was considered one of many moving parts across the campus over a 5-year phased approach.
We synthesised all of these findings to establish guiding concepts for the design team to bring the space to life.
The Strategic Outcome
The selected strategy establishes a phased, multi-decade roadmap that rationalizes four buildings into a more efficient long-term footprint of approximately 700,000 square feet.
The result:
Improved space utilization aligned to hybrid behavior
Reduced portfolio fragmentation and long-term exposure
Clear capital planning across a 20-year horizon
A scalable framework for future growth
The headquarters is now positioned as a dynamic platform — capable of evolving alongside the business.
Enabling Adoption
Ark supported implementation through executive alignment workshops and a tailored change management guide, ensuring the strategy translated into operational and cultural adoption.
Ark’s scope includes SteerCo and Change Champion engagements along with Town Halls for each of the three buildings undergoing renovations or relocations across the campus.
Impact at a Glance
This engagement reflects Ark’s approach: transforming complex workplace challenges into structured, data-driven decision intelligence that empowers long-term investment with confidence.